Sudanese Protesters: Death Toll In Military Crackdown At 60

In this frame grab from video provided by Sudan TV, Lieutenant General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, TMC, makes a broadcast announcement in Khartoum, Sudan, Tuesday, June 4, 2029. The TMC on Tuesday said that they want to stage early elections in the country and that all agreements with protest leaders have been cancelled. The statement came a day after a pro-democracy sit-in outside the army command base in the capital Khartoum was violently overrun by the ruling army. Protest organizers said 35 people died in the carnage Monday. (Sudan TV via AP)

BY BASSAM HATOUM, SAMY MAGDY

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — The death toll in the Sudanese military’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and their peaceful sit-in camp this week reached 60 on Wednesday, protest organizers said.

The mounting casualties are the latest challenge to the protest movement, which now aims to show it can keep up pressure in the streets after its central rallying point — the weeks-long sit-in outside the military headquarters in the country’s capital, Khartoum — was wiped out on Monday.

In April, the movement succeeded in forcing the military to remove Sudan’s longtime strongman, Omar al-Bashir. It then kept its sit-in going, demanding that the generals who took power hand over authority to civilians.


The last previously reported death toll stood at 40 but the Sudan Doctors Committee said security forces killed at least 10 people on Wednesday in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman. That came after another 10 people were killed on Tuesday, including five in the White Nile state, three in Omdurman and two in Khartoum’s Bahri neighborhood.

The doctors’ committee is the medical arm of the Sudanese Professionals Association, which has been spearheading protests against army rule. The medical group also said hundreds were wounded in clashes in the past two days.

Activists Mohammed Najib and Hashim al-Sudani said there were street battles late Tuesday and early Wednesday in Khartoum’s Bahri and Buri districts between protesters and security forces mainly from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

“In Buri, there were lots of shootings and tear gas,” al-Sudani said. “They tried to force people into narrow streets” to beat them.

On Monday, members of the RSF, which human rights groups say carried out rapes, torture and killings of civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region, and other troops waded into the protest camp outside the military’s headquarters in Khartoum, opening fire and burning down tents. Other troops crushed two smaller sit-ins organized by the protesters elsewhere.

After al-Bashir’s ouster, for weeks, the military and protest leaders negotiated over the makeup of a transitional council meant to run the country for three years before elections. Protesters demand that civilians dominate the council, but the generals resisted.

The crackdown put an end to the relative peace that surrounded the talks and signaled the military had lost patience with activists’ demands. The result puts the two sides on the path of a potentially longer confrontation with increasing violence.

In a televised speech early Tuesday, the military council’s head, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, blamed protest leaders for the volatile situation, accusing them of drawing out negotiations and trying to exclude some “political and security forces” from taking part in any transitional government.

He announced the military would unilaterally form an interim government and hold elections sooner, within seven to nine months, under international supervision. He said any agreements reached earlier in the negotiations with the demonstrators were canceled.

Protesters rejected the move because it would put the military in charge of running the election.

Since Monday, tensions remain high in Khartoum and elsewhere as demonstrators stage scattered rallies and block main roads with barricades. Security forces have been seen in online videos, patrolling Khartoum districts.

Madani Abbas Madani, a leading activist, said the protesters would continue an open-ended civil disobedience campaign until the overthrow of the ruling military council.

“What happened on Monday was a systematic and planned attempt to impose repression on the Sudanese people,” he said in televised comments late Tuesday.

Magdy reported from Cairo.

NIGERIA: The Imo Fiasco: Time To Legislate Handover

Rochas Okorocha

BY STEVE OSUJI

OWERR (SUN NEWS ONLINE) -- It is a perverse and graceless state out here in Imo State. One is not talking about the sheer dishevelment and post hurricane scenarios right from the Government Lodge down to the lost corners of the state. If a governor’s dwelling place is in a state of disgrace, there is no telling how the rest of his domain would be. No, I talk not about the bad behaviours of our immediate past governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha; it’s about the long-term debilitating effect of bad governance and about solution.

Again, this is not even about the heavy physical damage he inflicted on a once-beautiful, serene and upwardly mobile state. It is about the violence done to our psyche, our esteem and worst of all, our institutions. It can be said that where there are no institutions, there really is no life in the true sense of it because there is no human essence; no culture, no tradition and of course no civilization. In this new age of mankind, institution is everything. Peoples and countries that understand that institutions are sacrosanct; those who have the best institutions will always lead the world.

But the Okorocha mystique was to obliterate and vanquish institutions. Thus for eight years, he waged a relentless war against all the institutions there were in Imo state. And of course he left no institutional edifice of his time; not a trace. He did not only crash all systems, he pulled out the memory card and yanked the hard drive. Imo today can be likened to a vacuous state; a blind blunder-head groping about in the dark. Imo is devoid of any institutional memory whatsoever.

Consider this scenario: Commissioners for Information for eight years were eight. There were about five Secretaries to the State Government, about four commissioners for Land. This was the trend in his governance. Then there was balkanization of ministries and agencies, merging and de-merging including new ones like ministry of Happiness and all that jazz.

All of these were happening on the whims of Number one; as His Excellency woke up each day. Strategic appointees of state were called up and yanked off even before they were seated. In a situation like this, hardly any record is kept; there was no proper understanding of the importance of documentation and archiving, the state was run on the run so to speak. In an environment like this, it would of course be difficult to have a proper report of stewardship or give account; especially if there was no intention to hand over in the first place as was the case with former Governor Okorocha. It is this manner of dilemma besetting the immediate past administration that has made it very difficult if not impossible for it to handover its affairs of eight years.

Of course, anyone who knows about the running of government would discern that a proper handover could not be achieved by the Okorocha Administration. That there was no formal handover was made plain at the inauguration of the Secretary of the Imo State Government recently. During the occasion, Governor Emeka Ihedioha had called up the sitting Permanent Secretary of Government House who was the most senior personnel left to take the in-coming members of the new administration round the offices. He was asked about the status of formal handing over. The Principal Secretary had told the audience in the hall that no handover had been put to effect whereupon there was much angry rumbling in the audience.

It must be noted that there was no formal meeting between the governor-elect and the sitting governor in Imo State since the election was won and lost. Here was no cooperation in the activities leading to the inauguration. A sham joint transition committee was set up by the Okorocha administration which proposed elaborate project visit, but it was only a ruse to distract the in-coming government.

There have also been photographs of the cover of a handover note flying about in the social media. Some handover note, a man with understanding would wonder. Even if we assume that some notes are contained in that cover, the natural question to ask is that is that all Owelle Okorocha has to handover after eight years? For those who know, one consultancy and design report on one major road would be bulkier that Okorocha’s eight-year report of stewardship. Owelle Okorocha has forgotten so soon how then Governor Ikedi Ohakim handed over to him in 2011.

According to officials who witnessed the ceremony held in the Exco Chamber of Imo government House between top government officials led by Ohakim and the then in-coming governor-elect Okorocha and his team. According to report, the atmosphere was convivial between the sitting governor and the in-coming one.

Ohakim was said to have brought a truck load of documents representing his four years of stewardship which made Owelle Okorocha to joke that he wished all the documents were cash. Ohakim also handed Okorocha other paraphernalia of office as well as giving him confidential executive briefing. It was a serious and comprehensive state ceremony; it was an act of governance and statecraft. More remarkable, it was an act of grace and statesmanship. Managing a state is not only a serious business, it is a divine trust, it is about the lives of millions of people and must be carried out with the sobriety and in deed solemnity that it requires. But Owelle Okorocha turned governance into a plaything, an infantile affair and for eight years, the governance of Imo State was like children playing in the sand, trying to reenact governance within the ambit of their childish estimations. The result today is pathetic to behold.

It is true that there were other wayward governors who practically absconded from government house without the right and proper transition procedures. This is unacceptable and indeed a crime to the people of the states they had governed for so long and abandoned at the end stage.

By this piece advocates for a legislation to set the standards and procedures for ‘trasitioning’ from one government/administration to the other. This is both for the states and the federal government. In fact we suggest a publication of each state’s audited accounts of an administration before a formal handover of office. The law may also stipulate that an out-going governor MUST as a matter of duty, personally account for his stewardship at the handover ceremony.

This is a challenge to both the National Assembly and the States’ Houses of Assembly. A well made law would keep state executives on their toes as they run their states on a daily basis knowing that they would have to give a thorough account at the end of the day. This way, no in-coming governor would be left high and dry the way the Rochas Okorocha left Emeka Ihedioha. We must relentlessly interrogate the way our country is run if we want to march in stride with the rest of the world.

Osuji is Media Aide to Governor Emeka Ihedioha

SOURCE: DAILY SUN

We’ll Not Run Govt Of Propaganda – Ihedioha

Imo State Governor Emeka Ihedioha. Image via Daily Sun

BY GEORGE ONYEJIUWA

OWERRI (DAILY SUN) -- Imo State Governor, Emeka Ihedioha, has said his administration would not be run on propaganda.

This was just as he reiterated that his government would recover all assets, property, funds and private lands forcefully acquired by the immediate past governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha and officials of his administration.

He also disclosed his administration would set up team of legal experts for the review and update of the extant laws of the state to be in tandem with the objective of his administration to develop both infrastructurally and industrially.

The governor stated this, yesterday, while declaring open a three-day retreat/orientation for Imo State House of Assembly members-elect of the ninth Assembly held at the Crystal Lake Resort, Oguta.

“We are not going to run an administration based on propaganda and we will not be distracted by those who have already decided to bad mouth us. What we promised the people of the state is that besides restoring the state to progress, we are going to recover all looted funds, assets, property and private lands that were forcefully acquired by the immediate past governor, Rochas Okorocha and officials of his administration. We are compiling a comprehensive list of those involved in the criminal act and would soon be forwarded to security agencies.

“You cannot run a state the way you like, you don’t just take away the property of a state; that is stealing and we will criminalise you. If government is run the way the immediate past administration did, former governors of the state would have left nothing for their successors. I can’t just swallow the lie that I have been handed over to when I wasn’t.”

He maintained that his administration is going to review all land allocations immediately, stressing that it did not matter when it was back dated as the administration has already secured the services of forensic experts to determined the actual date when such lands were allocated.

He re-emphasised his commitment to qualitative education, poverty and unemployment alleviation, wealth creation, massive investment in agriculture, good quality health care for the people as well as an enabling environment to make the state a preferred destination for business.

Trump-GOP Split: Senators Loudly Oppose Mexico Tariff Threat

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., speaks to reporters following the weekly policy lunches on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

BY LISA MASCARO, LUIS ALONSO LUGO AND DARLENE SUPERVILLE

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rare confrontation, Republican senators declared deep opposition Tuesday to President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs on all goods coming into the U.S. from Mexico. But it’s unclear they have the votes to stop him, and Trump said they’d be “foolish” to try.

All sides, including officials from Mexico meeting with Trump negotiators in Washington this week, remain hopeful that high-level talks will ease the president away from his threat. But with the tariffs set to start next Monday — and Trump declaring them “more likely” than not to take effect — fellow Republicans in Congress warned the White House they are ready to stand up to the president.

The public split and looming standoff over 5% tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico revealed a fundamental divergence in values between the president and his party. Trump uses tariffs as leverage to get what he wants — in this case to force Mexico to do more to halt illegal immigration. For Republicans, tariffs are counter to firmly rooted orthodoxy and viewed as nothing more than taxes they strenuously oppose.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said with understatement, “There is not much support in my conference for tariffs, that’s for sure.”

At a lengthy closed-door lunch meeting at the Capitol, senators took turns warning Trump officials there could be trouble if the GOP-held Senate votes on disapproving the tariffs. Congressional rejection would be a stiff rebuke to Trump, even more forceful than an earlier effort to prevent him from shifting money to build his long-promised border wall with Mexico.

“Deep concern and resistance,” is how Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas characterized the mood. “I will yield to nobody in passion and seriousness and commitment to securing the border, but there’s no reason for Texas farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small businesses to pay the price of massive new taxes.”

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who was among the senators who spoke up, said, “I think the administration has to be concerned about another vote of disapproval. ... I’m not the only one saying it.”

The outcome would be uncertain — Trump could try to veto a disapproval resolution as he did before. But many Republicans who voted against Trump earlier this year actually supported his ultimate goal of building the border wall. They were just uneasy with his executive reach to do it. Now, the president doesn’t have anywhere near the same backing for the tariffs.

The GOP opposition is grounded in fears over what Trump’s tariffs would do to the livelihoods of ordinary Americans . Senators worry they would spike U.S. consumers’ costs , harm the economyand imperil a major pending US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

With jitters running high, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday he’s prepared to respond to protect the economy, and stocks rallied on that signal that the Fed will likely cut interest rates later this year.

Mexico is concerned about the tariffs as well, but top officials seemed optimistic about a resolution.

“By what we have seen so far, we will be able to reach an agreement,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said during a news conference at the Mexican Embassy in Washington. “That is why I think the imposition of tariffs can be avoided.”

Trump, during a press conference in London, offered mixed messages.

“We’re going to see if we can do something,” he said on the second day of his state visit to Britain.

“But I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on,” he said. He also said he doubted Republicans in Congress would muster the votes against him. “If they do, it’s foolish.”

The Mexican officials arrived in Washington over the weekend as Mexico launched a diplomatic counteroffensive and fresh negotiations. On Tuesday, Mexico’s trade negotiator Jesus Seade was meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and Ebrard will meet Wednesday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Republican senators are hopeful those talks will prevent the tariffs. But if negotiations should fail, the lawmakers warn they may have no choice but to take action to stop Trump.

“Our hope is the tariffs will be avoided,” McConnell said.

Lawmakers and business allies worry the tariffs will derail the long-promised United-States-Mexico-Canada trade deal— a rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump campaigned against and promised to replace.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Finance Committee, told reporters Tuesday the tariffs make passage of USMCA “more difficult.”

Questions remained, meanwhile, over how, exactly, the president would invoke executive authority to slap tariffs on the Mexican goods -- and what Congress could do to block him.

Trump has indicated he will rely on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a national emergency executive action he can take without congressional approval.

But lawmakers say they can quickly vote on a resolution to disapprove. That’s what happened earlier this year when Congress, stunned by Trump’s claim of executive power, tried to block him from taking funds for the border wall with Mexico. Congress voted to disapprove of Trump’s actions, but the president vetoed the resolution.

This time, Republicans warn the numbers could be higher against the president — possibly a veto-proof majority in the Senate. But it’s unclear the president could be blocked in the House where Republicans may be less likely to oppose him.

Democrats — and some Republicans — doubt the tariffs will ever take effect. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that “Trump has a habit of talking tough and then retreating.”

Trump struck back against Schumer on Twitter, insisting the tariff threat was “no bluff.”

Earlier Tuesday, Trump claimed “millions of people” are entering the U.S. through Mexico and criticized congressional Democrats for not passing new laws. He said, “Mexico should not allow millions of people to try and enter our country.”

It is unclear what more Mexico can do — and what would be enough — to satisfy Trump on illegal immigration, a signature issue of his presidency.

The United States has not presented concrete benchmarks to assess whether the U.S. ally is sufficiently stemming the migrant flow from Central America. Mexico calls the potential tariffs hurtful to the economies of both countries and useless to slow the northbound flow of Central American migrants.

Associated Press writer Padmananda Rama contributed.

NIGERIA: Imo Frees 101-Year-Old Prisoner

Celestine Egbunuche and his son Paul have been in jail for over 18 years for murder. Image via BBC.

MAGNUS EZE

ENUGU (DAILY SUN) -- The Imo State Government has granted pardon to Nigeria’s oldest prisoner, Pa Celestine Egbunuche.

Egbunuche, who would be 101 years on August 4, has for over 18 years lived in desolation and hopelessness within the confines of Enugu Maximum Prison.

Daily Sun reliably gathered that his release was one of the last actions taken by former governor Rochas Okorocha before he vacated the Douglas House, Owerri, on May 28.

The Global Society for Anti-Corruption (GSAC), a non-governmental organization (NGO), last year, petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari and Okorocha seeking pardon for the inmate.

The NGO, in letters dated September 5, 2018 and signed by its President, Franklin Ezeona, had urged that the centenarian be freed to go home and die peacefully.

South East/South South Regional Director of GSAC, Mrs. Amaka Nweke, confirmed the development yesterday, disclosing that the prison authorities in Enugu were already perfecting papers for his release any moment from now.

Pa Egbunuche hails from Akokwa in Ideato North Local Government Area of Imo State, and was condemned to death along with his son, Paul Egbunuche, and another relation, now 88.

They were said to have been involved in a land dispute in which somebody slumped and died in the process.

Daily Sun had, in an exclusive report of August 8, 2018, captioned, “Nigeria’s oldest prisoner clocks 100 in Enugu,” jolted the world with the pathetic story of the centenarian, who reportedly lost his sight few days after the birthday.

The news went viral on the social media, raising questions to how a centenarian could still be in prison in Nigeria, when in other climes, inmates above 65 years are eligible for either parole or state pardon.

Abuja-based rights lawyer, Ugochukwu Ezekiel, who had lent voice to the call for Pa Egbunuche’s release, yesterday asked government not to abandon the man but instead, he should be fully rehabilitated.

SOURCE: SUN NEWS ONLINE

California Man Freed From Life Prison Sentence For Joyriding

This photo provided by Mayer Brown LLP shows Kenneth Oliver, right, after his release from prison, posing for a selfie with his father Dr. Bernard Oliver on Tuesday, June 4, 2019. Kenneth Oliver, a California man, has been freed from prison after serving 23 years of his life sentence on a joyriding conviction. It included eight years in solitary confinement for possessing a book written by the co-founder of a notorious prison gang. (Bernard Oliver/Mayer Brown LLP via AP)

BY DON THOMPSON

SACRAMENTO, CALIF (AP) - A California man was freed from prison after serving 23 years of his life sentence on a joyriding conviction, including eight years in solitary confinement for possessing a book written by the co-founder of a notorious prison gang.

His attorneys say it's unconscionable that he was set to die in prison for nonviolent crimes.

Kenneth Oliver, now 52, was given the life sentence at 29 under California's strict "three strikes" sentencing law for repeat felons.


Voters eased the law in 2012 to allow life sentences only when the third strike is for a serious or violent felony.

But Oliver was ineligible for a new sentence because he was found with purported gang materials including a book called "Blood In My Eye," completed by Black Guerilla Family co-founder George Jackson days before he died during a bloody attempt to escape from San Quentin State Prison in 1971.

Oliver was freed Monday after Los Angeles County prosecutors dropped their objections "in the interest of justice," and after the state corrections department expunged his gang-affiliation record and paid him a $125,000 settlement for his time in solitary.

"It's almost impossible to believe that what happened to Ken happened here in California. You know, people think of this as an enlightened state and both the sentence and the time in (solitary confinement) don't square with that," said Ward Johnson, lead counsel on the case at the Mayer Brown law firm.

Oliver was arrested while a passenger in a stolen vehicle and pleaded guilty to taking a vehicle without permission. A stolen handgun was later found in his hotel room, prosecutors said. It was the latest in a string of crimes dating to an armed robbery when he was 16.

Los Angeles County prosecutor Nicol Walgren said she was impressed by Oliver's rehabilitation in prison and preparation for a successful life outside. She called him the kind of prisoner that voters envisioned when they eased the three strikes law.

"Ken's sentence of 50 (years)-to-life was much longer than (for) rapists and murderers," said Michael Romano, director and founder of the Three Strikes and Justice Advocacy Projects at Stanford Law School. "There should be some proportionality."

Voters agreed when they opted to free nearly 3,000 third-strike inmates, Romano said. Yet he estimated that another 200 to 500 qualifying inmates remain incarcerated largely because they can't afford the legal team that worked for free on Oliver's behalf.

"I really haven't wrapped my head around it fully," Oliver said 24 hours after his release and after he and his father, a university dean in Georgia, celebrated with dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. "I do feel like time has passed me by but I'm trying not to be negative about it."

He's now in a transitional housing program and plans to become a paralegal, helping others through social justice programs while reconnecting with his three adult children.

He couldn't understand being sent to solitary confinement for possessing a book readily available in most campus libraries, but spent his time studying the law and filing the federal lawsuit that eventually helped lead to his release.

"You're single-celled for most of the time and every time you leave the cell or are escorted out you have to strip naked and bend over and cough," Oliver said of his time in solitary. Exercise was three hours a day in a six-by-nine foot "dog kennel."

"Some people go crazy in there," he said. "Me, I chose to read and try to find a way out of there and not let that circumstance define me."

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Homelessness Jumps 12% In L.A. County And 16% In The City; Officials ‘Stunned’

Sheriff Deputy Sgt. William Kitchin talks with Leah Davalos under an overpass while she was recorded for the 2019 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count in the City of Commerce. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

BY BENJAMIN DRESKES, DOUG SMITH

LOS ANGELES (LOS ANGELES TIMES) -- In a hard reality check for Los Angeles County’s multibillion-dollar hope of ending homelessness, officials reported Tuesday that the number of people living on the streets, in vehicles and in shelters increased by about 12% over last year.

The annual point-in-time count, delivered to the Board of Supervisors, put the number of homeless people just shy of 59,000 countywide. Within the city of Los Angeles, the number soared to more than 36,000, a 16% increase.

And as in past years, most — about 75% — were living outside, fueling speculation of a growing public health crisis of rats and trash near homeless encampments downtown.

The findings in L.A. follow a string of similarly dire point-in-time counts from across California, as government officials struggle to respond more forcefully to the state’s abject lack of affordable housing. The shortage is driving up rental prices, forcing people onto the streets at a rapid pace.

“At this point of unprecedented wealth in the county of Los Angeles, we are equally confronted with unprecedented poverty manifesting itself in the form of homelessness,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas told The Times.

In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called the increase in homelessness “heartbreaking,” but said he was he hopeful about the city’s recent work to alleviate the crisis, including an investment of $42 million to respond to public health concerns and intensify street-based services.

“This work has never been for the faint of heart, and we cannot let a set of difficult numbers discourage us, or weaken our resolve,” Garcetti said in a statement to The Times.

But among others in L.A. County, the point-in-time count crushed the optimism from last year’s tally, when a modest decrease in homelessness was recorded. The uptick left officials struggling to understand how the tide could have turned so badly in a year when millions of dollars had been spent rolling out new initiatives to move people into shelters and permanent housing.

Volunteer Barbara Petersmeyer counts homeless during a three-day 2019 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count last January in Los Angeles. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Funds from the 2017 Measure H sales tax reached full strength last year and expanded homeless services got more people off the street than ever before — a little more than 20,000 into some form of housing, according to the county. Yet the number of people becoming homeless outpaced those historic gains.

“Last year's count, we felt we were trimming in a way that would suggest we were getting our arms around this,” Ridley-Thomas said. “And yet this year we are pretty well stunned by this data.”

Tuesday’s supervisors meeting was packed with homeless and housing advocates, some of whom yelled, “Shame on you!” and “That’s an undercount!” when county officials showed the point-in-time count on a large screen.

Board chair Janice Hahn admitted that getting chronically homeless people off the streets seems to be taking longer.

“The residents are seeing more encampments, more people sleeping on the sidewalks in dirty, unhealthy and heartbreaking conditions,” she said. “They are frustrated by this problem. We need to give people answers.”

But bracing for what appeared to be difficult years ahead, L.A. city and county officials have backed off their one-time mantra of “ending homelessness,” and are fully linking the crisis on the region’s streets to a housing crisis that is beyond their control.

“If we don't change the fundamentals of housing affordability, this is going to be a very long road,” Peter Lynn, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said in a briefing with The Times. “If we don't get ahead of affordability, we're going to be very hard pressed to get ahead of homelessness.”

Both Lynn and Ridley-Thomas rejected the idea that new programs and resources to address homelessness had not been effective.

“Overall, the service portion of the effort on mental health, substance use, the issue of housing, rent subsidies, those are important and we should stay the course,” Ridley-Thomas said. “Where we have to work much harder is in the area of affordable housing.”

Without the flow of new dollars for services, Lynn said, the point-in-time count would have been worse and more closely resembled the dramatic jumps in neighboring Southern California counties and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Orange County changed the way it conducted its count and recorded a 43% increase from its last count in 2017. Ventura, San Bernardino and Kern counties all reported increases of 20% or more.

Lynn pointed to two vulnerable groups as proof that resources work. Even though nearly 3,000 more veterans were reported homeless last year, there was no noticeable change in the number of homeless veterans on the street. Families experiencing homelessness grew by 8% with nearly 8,000 families being provided homes.

One of the largest increases, however, was among people 18 to 24 years old. Lynn said a 24% jump was partly the result of a change in the methodology of the count. But still, he said, “there was a significant increase, many more unsheltered. We were able to house more youth this year than last year, but this is an overflow population.”

Also exceeding the county average was a 17% spike of the chronically homeless — people with a mental or physical impairment who have been on the street or in shelter for more than a year.

Lynn said the dent made in that population by transitioning nearly 5,000 people into permanent housing was overshadowed by the phenomenon of people “aging in” — those who were counted last year but, at that point, weren’t “chronic” because they had only been homeless for less than a year.

The growth of homelessness was also uneven across L.A. County. The Westside experienced the largest increase at 19%, following a year in which its numbers were down by even more. The San Gabriel Valley was close behind with a 17% increase, marking the second consecutive year its homeless population had grown.

Two relative bright spots were Pasadena and Long Beach, which along with Glendale conduct their own counts. Pasadena saw a 20% drop, while Long Beach remained relatively flat with only a 2% increase since 2017.

Long Beach’s mayor, Robert Garcia, credited the influx of county and state funds for helping execute a plan to put more people into shelters. But he said that about 52% of the city’s homeless population was homeless for the first time. “People need to understand the link between homelessness and housing affordability,” he said.

The effects of a sizzling rental market and the soaring cost of living in Los Angeles were palpable at the newly opened temporary shelter in Councilman Gil Cedillo’s district near MacArthur Park Lake.

Garcetti committed to opening shelters in every council district, but the results have been slow. Only three have opened. The one in Cedillo’s district began serving 28 single women and five families last month.

Inside, Anna Gray watched her two sons Patrick, 5, and Harold, 9, bounce around the spartan room as she recounted her life. Gray had lived in a studio for five years and had fallen behind on the rent. When the landlord wanted to raise it to market rate, she realized she wouldn’t be able to afford it.

She has been moving from shelter to shelter ever since.

“At one point I had two jobs, I was working, had a car and still couldn’t find housing,” Gray said. “Let’s be real. I’m a single mom. I have all these struggles in life.”

This year’s dramatic increase in homelessness has spurred United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the mega nonprofit that provided financial support, volunteers and messaging for the Measure H tax hike and the city’s Proposition HHH homeless housing bond, to reevaluate its efforts, President and Chief Executive Elise Buik said. For a decade the agency has zeroed in on homelessness, but now it is looking to broaden its agenda to take on housing.

“We haven’t focused as much on affordable housing, but we are now,” Buik said. “We’ve got to start getting more affordable housing in the region.”

Similarly, nonprofits such as the People Assisting The Homeless, or PATH, which builds affordable housing and runs shelters, have begun to call for change at the state level to help address what’s playing out on the street. Los Angeles County needs almost 517,000 more units of affordable rental housing to meet demand, and a renter needs to make $47.52 per hour, which is more than triple the minimum wage, to pay the median monthly rent of $2,471, according to a recently released report by the California Housing Partnership.

“As rent continues to increase and wages remain stagnant, the potential for individuals to fall into homelessness increases,” said Joel John Roberts, chief executive of PATH. “To counteract this imbalance, we must continue to invest in solutions like permanent supportive housing and push for legislation in Sacramento.”

As head of a city-county bureaucratic agency that was formed primarily as a conduit for homelessness funds and to conduct the annual count, Lynn said he can do little more than react to those root causes.

“We're the safety net of last resort,” Lynn said. “I can't fix poverty. I can't fix housing affordability. I can't fix the criminal justice system. I can't fix the foster system. But the poverty rate here is crushing a lot of Angelenos, and the economy that is booming so well is leaving out a large number of people.”

Times staff writers Dakota Smith and Matt Stiles contributed to this report.

Photo Series Explores The Beauty Of First-Generation Immigrants

BY LUCY PURDY

LONDON (POSITIVE NEWS) -- Photographer Elizabeth Okoh, who was raised in Nigeria, wanted to explore the experiences of others in the African diaspora

A five-part conceptual photographic series, African Diasporan, by Elizabeth Okoh, includes portraits of people who were brought up in Africa but who now live in London. Okoh took up photography seriously in 2017, after doing it as a hobby since her teenage years. Her models are originally from countries including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gambia. Okoh did all the shoots in one day, including styling, planning and set design.

“I’m mostly inspired by my culture, immigration and living in the diaspora,” she said. “I’m interested in how other Africans experience living in the UK having been raised elsewhere, and in figuring out if there are any shared experiences.”

Okoh noted that the way she was raised in Nigeria is “very different” to how her mother is raising her younger sister here in the UK, a topic that influenced the ‘Legacy’ part of the collection.

“More African women are becoming more empowered and speaking up for what they want, so I was interested in how this influences heterosexual relationships in a culture where the man is seen as dominant with no room for negotiation,” she said of the ‘Union’ collection. ‘Duality’ explores how African men are multifaceted: “The idea of being strong but also vulnerable and attuned to their emotions.”

“In ‘Bonds’, I explore the bond between sisters and friends. My models wear very similar dresses, as it’s very common for siblings to wear dresses from the same fabric for special occasions, and in friendships, similar outfits are worn for celebrations such as weddings. The idea was to explore how this type of relationship blossoms or stagnates in a different culture with different sets of norms.”

Finally, in the ‘Womanhood’ collection, Okoh explores what it is to be female and African. “How do African women retain their culture and still exercise the agency to drive their own choices which may very much deviate from traditional ideas?”

So, what did she learn? “That, although we come from different backgrounds, most of our experiences in the diaspora are relatable. I learned that we’re all simply finding ways to become better versions of ourselves, while finding where we fit in this ‘new world’.”

Alarm As Ebola Outbreak Reaches 2,000 Cases, Picks Up Speed

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of the ovary from a nonhuman primate infected with Ebola virus. Characteristic filamentous Ebola virus particles are present between cells (bright red). Intracytoplasmic Ebola virus inclusion bodies forming crystalline arrays can be seen within ovarian stromal cells (darker red). Image: National Institute of Health


JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has surpassed 2,000 cases and is picking up speed.

The number of confirmed cases reached the milestone three times as quickly as it took to reach 1,000, experts said Tuesday. The outbreak declared in August, the second-deadliest in history, has killed more than 1,300 people in a volatile region where rebel attacks and community resistance have hurt containment efforts.

The 2,000 figure is a “sad and frustrating milestone. The insecurity is holding us back,” World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva. Each attack keeps health workers from the crucial work of vaccinating people and tracking thousands of contacts of victims.

world’s most dangerous diseases.

Misunderstandings have been high in a region that had never experienced an Ebola outbreak until now, and years of rebel attacks have left many residents wary of outsiders, especially ones accompanied by Congolese security forces or United Nation peacekeepers.

“This outbreak will only end when communities are engaged and leading the response efforts themselves,” Nicole Fassina, Ebola coordinator with the IFRC, said in a statement. Increasing armed protection for health workers could aggravate the tensions, the statement added.

Because of the mistrust many Ebola cases are not being counted and the number of confirmed cases is likely “an underestimate and not a realistic picture of the number of cases out there,” the IRC said in a separate statement. Many people, frightened, are still dying at home instead of presenting themselves at health centers for treatment.

Amid the challenges, WHO and others have pointed out signs of progress. Notably, more than 129,000 people have received an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine in its first widespread use.

Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Fighting Germans And Jim Crow: Role Of Black Troops On D-Day

World War II veteran Johnnie Jones, Sr. poses for a portrait at his home in Baton Rouge, La., Tuesday, May 28, 2019. Jones, who joined the military in 1943 out of Southern University in Baton Rouge, was a warrant officer in a unit responsible for unloading equipment and supplies onto Normandy. He remembers wading ashore and one incident when he and his fellow soldiers came under fire from a German sniper. He grabbed his weapon and returned fire along with the other soldiers. It's something that still haunts his memories. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

BY REBECCA SANTANA

BATON ROUGE, LA. (AP) — It was the most massive amphibious invasion the world has ever seen, with tens of thousands of Allied troops spread out across the air and sea aiming to get a toehold in Normandy for the final assault on Nazi Germany. And while portrayals of D-Day often depict an all-white host of invaders, in fact it also included many African Americans.

Roughly 2,000 African American troops are believed to have hit the shores of Normandy in various capacities on June 6, 1944. Serving in a U.S. military still-segregated by race, they encountered discrimination both in the service and when they came home.

But on Normandy, they faced the same danger as everyone else.

The only African American combat unit that day was the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, whose job was to set up explosive-rigged balloons to deter German planes. Waverly Woodson Jr. was a corporal and a medic with the battalion. Although Woodson did not live to see this week’s 75th anniversary — he died in 2005 — he told The Associated Press in 1994 about how his landing craft hit a mine on the way to Omaha Beach.

“The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88mm guns. “They were murder. Of our 26 Navy personnel there was only one left. They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Then they started with the mortar shells.”

Woodson was wounded in the back and groin while on the landing craft but went on to spend 30 hours on the beach tending to other wounded men before eventually collapsing, according to a letter from then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Van Hollen, now a U.S. senator, is heading an effort to have Woodson posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on D-Day. But a lack of documentation — in part because of a 1973 fire that destroyed millions of military personnel files — has stymied the effort.

Another member of the unit, William Dabney described what they encountered on D-Day in a 2009 Associated Press interview during the invasion’s 65th anniversary.

“The firing was furious on the beach. I was picking up dead bodies and I was looking at the mines blowing up soldiers. ... I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not,” said Dabney, then 84, who passed away last year.

Linda Hervieux detailed the exploits of the 320th in her book “Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War.” She said the military resisted efforts to desegregate as it ramped up for World War II. Instead they kept separate units and separate facilities for black and white troops.

“This was a very expensive and inefficient way to run an army. The Army ... could have ordered its men to integrate and to treat black soldiers as fully equal partners in this war. The Army declined to do so,” she said. The Army wanted to focus on the war and didn’t want to become a social experiment, Hervieux said, but she notes that when African American soldiers were called on to fight side by side with whites, they did so without problems.

By the end of World War II, more than a million African Americans were in uniform including the famed Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion. The Double V campaign launched by the Pittsburgh Courier, a prominent African American newspaper, called for a victory in the war as well as a victory at home over segregation, including in the military.

During World War II, it was unheard of for African American officers to lead white soldiers and they faced discrimination even while in the service. Black troops were often put in support units responsible for transporting supplies. But during the Normandy invasion that didn’t mean they were immune from danger.

Ninety-nine-year-old Johnnie Jones Sr., who joined the military in 1943 out of Southern University in Baton Rouge, was a warrant officer in a unit responsible for unloading equipment and supplies onto Normandy. He remembers wading ashore and coming under fire from a German sniper. He grabbed his weapon and returned fire along with the other soldiers. It’s something that still haunts his memories.

“I still see him, I see him every night,” he told the AP recently. In another incident, he remembers a soldier charging a pillbox, a selfless act that likely ended the soldier’s life. “I know he didn’t come back home. He didn’t come back home but he saved me and he saved many others.”

After defending their country in Europe, many African American troops were met with discrimination yet again at home. Jones remembers coming back the U.S. after the war’s end and having to move to the back of a bus as it crossed the Mason-Dixon line separating North from South. He recalls being harassed by police officers after returning to Louisiana.

“I couldn’t sit with the soldiers I had been on the battlefield with. I had to go to the back of the bus,” said Jones, who went on to become a lawyer and civil rights activist in Baton Rouge. “Those are the things that come back and haunt you.”

Follow Santana on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ruskygal

Biafra: This Country Never Learns

Desperately starved Biafra children from the Obafemi Awolowo orchestrated economic blockade and Yakubu Gowon's-led genocidal campaign against the Igbo Nation. Image: Hulton Deitsch Collection, January 1970.

BY OZIOMA NWADIKE

I wanted to start this article about a dead body but I dithered. Let me tell you another story. Until 3 years ago, I used to work for a corporate law firm in Lagos. It was my first job after the National Youth Service and it taught me how to be a man. I met a man Ganiyu Tam (name withheld), he was one of the finest lawyers I have ever met. He was brilliant and affable, and spoke the best English I ever heard anyone speak.

He was best mates with one of the founding partners of my firm and our paths crossed when his firm collaborated with my former employees in a Federal government debt recovery matter against an indigenous construction company. I thought Ganiyu was the greatest lawyer alive and I was always pumped whenever he had to travel down from Jos to Lagos for our court hearings. After court he would tap me on the shoulder and tell me about morality and the law and why the other lawyer’s technical submissions were unconscionable. He was a technical lawyer too but he would also tell me to look beyond technicality to the spirit of the law.

On one of those days after court, I asked him if he was from Plateau state and he said yes and for a second, his surname triggered a memory.

‘Tam Sir? Are you related to Colonel Tam from the Nzeogwu coup story?’. And he said ‘ Yes, I was barely 5 when they came to take my father away’.

Ganiyu was a child of a Nigerian Military commander who lost his life during the first coup in January 15 1966. He told me about his siblings. One of his sisters was now a judge in the Court of Appeal. I then told him that my grandfather during the last days of the Biafran war was Acting Provost Marshall of Biafra. Ganiyu said his mother had recently met with the Igbo Nigerian officer (a man who, at that time, was a regular visitor to their family home in Ikoyi), who abducted and murdered his father, and that she prayed for him and forgave him.

This is a story of love, blood, betrayal, and forgiveness. Ganiyu had no hate in his heart, though there was pain. Driving out of Ikoyi to Victoria Island, and seated side by side was the son of a murdered Northern Military Colonel and the grandson of a Biafran Provost Marshall. It was surreal. In the throes of depression and disillusionment I left the corporate law firm in Lagos and set up a criminal appellate defense law firm in Owerri, but I still always remember Ganiyu in my prayers.

Big Al and Chikezie

My grandfather Captain Alphonsus Nwadike (real name) was a Nigerian military officer who later fought on the Biafran side during the civil war. Big Al was over 6’3 tall, and remarkably handsome, and also saw action in Congo as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the 60s. He was tipped off, a night before the counter coup, by his best friend Captain Usman Biu, who overheard some of the Northern soldiers saying ‘Tomorrow, Nwadike wey like to play draft, I go use dagger tear that him belly’.

Big Al left Kaduna late in the night on the eve of the counter coup. Of the military police and trained in military intelligence, he made the journey by bush paths from Kaduna to Makurdi, for days, before boarding the train to Enugu. It was later he heard that Igbo people who went to board the train from Kaduna were all murdered in cold blood at the train station and at different stops along the way.

When the Biafran war ended and Big Al returned to the village, his family and kinsmen all gathered and were throwing sand on him to make sure he wasn’t a ghost. They hadn’t seen him in months. Barely months after the war ended, Captain Usman made the trip from Jos to Owerri in a military truck filled with food and cloths. The villagers on seeing the military truck took to their heels. They didn’t want to fight another war. Big Al came out in the middle of the town’s square, thinking he was going to be rearrested again, having been detained in Enugu at the end of the war and released after a few months. Big Al looked and saw his best friend Usman Biu with a truck of food and cloths, and they held each other and cried and cried until there was no more tears.

Big Al died in 1996, he had diabetes and couldn’t afford insulin injections regularly. He trained 2 of his sons to become university graduates, but he didn’t live long enough to see his favorite son my father, Chief Batos Chikezie Nwadike fiercely oppose Biafran separatists and be on the ballot and poll over 50,000 votes as a candidate in the 2011 Nigerian Presidential elections. I wonder what he would have thought about his son’s 3 decade activism for a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction (what he calls Igbo Presidency) and fuller inclusion of the Igbo in the Nigerian political process.

Big Al lost everything but he didn’t teach his children to hate and I have never for a single day heard my father utter a word of tribal hate. In 2003, my father as a political adviser to the late Chuba Okadigbo crisscrossed the entire nation campaigning with Muhammadu Buhari in the hope that it will one day pave the way for an Igbo President. He scoffs sometimes at my Marxist interpretation of Nigerian politics. My father believes in the Nigerian dream and wants Igbos to be a part of that tapestry.

Bruce Mayrock

About a month ago, I was driving back home in the dead of the night. On Wetheral road, Owerri, I saw a dead body. A car sped in front of me. I slowed down a bit. I almost stopped. I thought about so many things. This is Nigeria. I sped off too. Human life means nothing in Nigeria. You can get mass murdered for throwing stones. Seeing dead bodies or hearing reports of violent deaths has become routine. We are now tuned out of death. Hundreds of people die violently and only a whimper by crazed un-woke people on Twitter, disrupting more important conversations on celebrity gossips and culture wars.

Bruce Mayrock was a 20 year old American student. He saw pictures of dead bodies and kwashiorkor Biafran children and he was thoroughly repulsed. Bruce reportedly wrote articles to the United States president and other leading government figures advocating for an end to the genocide and the Biafran blockade. He thought nobody was listening. So he went to the United Nations office in New York and set himself on fire. He died from the burns on May 30, 1969. He wanted people to listen.

He was carrying a cardboard sign which he wrote ‘ You must stop the genocide… Please save 9 million Biafrans’. Bruce Mayrock is interred at a grave in Mount Ararat Cemetery, Sulfolk county, New York.

The Biafran Genocide

2 million people died in the Biafran Genocide, the overwhelming majority were children and women and not combatants. They died mostly from Nigerian war planes flying low and intently strafing civilian populations and starvation from a total blockade, the Nigerian government preventing aid organizations from bringing in food and medicine to civilians. Most people didn’t die fighting, they died trying to live.

In Nigeria, the death of 2 million people is a controversial issue. People start their arguments with ‘No matter how you feel about the Biafran war…’ How in the world do you feel about 2 million deaths? How do you feel about a genocide? We have become a nation of cowards, afraid of a dark brooding past. The effrontery to sweep a genocide under the carpet.

When Biyi Bandele’s movie adaptation of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of Yellow Sun was due to open, the government censored it and kept delaying its release. There was some talk about an airport scene in the movie which the government wanted cut. What happened at the airport in Kano is a historical fact and was documented by the Times of London of 7th October, 1966. It was a massacre in Northern Nigeria and at the end of the Pogrom, 30 thousand people had been murdered in cold blood by civilian and military mobs.

I also recall the outrage that greeted Chinua Achebe’s release of his book — ’There was a Country’. It was unprecedented and I have never seen a thing like that. In his book, the late Bard had harsh words for the misguided Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, the quixotic January coup plotters, and the charismatic Chief Obafemi Awolowo, among others. Chief Awolowo is on record to have owned up to orchestrating the starvation policy. In view of the genocidal outcomes of the policy, there wasn’t really much to argue about. To my greatest surprise, intellectuals were falling over themselves to defend Chief Awolowo, a man of their tribe and to disparage Achebe as an Igbo ethnic jingoist. I never regained my respect for so called Nigerian intellectuals but a few. I had read ‘The Man Died’ and I knew Wole Soyinka was a witness of truth and that was enough for me.

For another insidious group, discussing the civil war is a chance to remind everyone of the atrocities committed by Biafra against other ethnic minorities within its enclave. ‘Both sides committed atrocities so can’t you see they both cancel each other.’ I remember my days in the University of Lagos and how a beautiful UK trained lecturer in discussing the Nigerian civil war, sought to wrap it up around this narrative of equal blame and atrocities on both sides.

This is not suggest that ethnic minorities did not suffer acts of discrimination, violence and deaths at the hands of renegade Biafran soldiers. But I am yet to read any serious evidence of authorized mass killings of ethnic minorities by the then Biafran government. There is often talk of forced conscription and relocations but none of that was unique to ethnic minorities in Biafra, it was equally applicable to Igbos. The real story rather is that, during the war, in Asaba, in the then Mid-Western Region, a Nigerian Military Commander, Murtala Muhammad called all the male indigenes of the town for a meeting and shot every single one of them in cold blood. And that all over Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Cross River, there are Biafran veterans, men who fought for what was their country at that time. Okokon Idem and Phillip Effiong.

I have no right to say my pain is bigger than yours. But in the Nigerian context, the atrocities on both sides talking point is often a pretext to justify and downplay the Biafran genocide. I agree though that this view is debatable.

This Country Never Learns

Following Nigerian politics in recent times, one feels like we are right back to where we started from. I have never seen this level of polarization. We have a president who in words and deeds has shown himself incapable of unifying. However, now we have even bigger problems than regurgitating gruesome tales of millions of Igbo killed over 50 years ago. We are faced with a deadly Islamic insurgency and general insecurity all across the country. The truth is that this country never learns. We never learnt from the Civil War and we are not going to learn from this Boko Haram uprising. The civil war was about an elite power tussle, disinformation, ethnic rivalry, a lack of national identity and government misrule. Boko Haram is about poverty, public distrust in government and religious extremism.

In a country that survived a genocide, hundreds of Shitte Muslims, Nigerian citizens, were murdered in cold blood for the crime of blocking the army chief from using a public road and we had a vigorous debate on whether the deaths were justified. A foolish debate. We merely replaced the Igbos with the Shittes. And the standard had fallen from murdering the head of the regional government and his family to merely blocking a public road.

How much will a national apology from the Federal government about the infanticidal turn the civil war took and a national Biafran war memorial day, go in healing old wounds. My guess is that it will aid rather than exacerbate. The sweeping under the carpet is what has allowed Nnamdi Kanu to continue to wear designer suits, living lavishly in Tel Alviv, while aligning himself with the racist right wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who gets a kick from murdering Palestinian children and enforcing a total blockade and an open air prison in Gaza. An irony lost on the lily levered Kanu.

Maybe we can begin to have a conversation about true federalism and government accountability rather than using prebendalism and sectionalism as an over arching governing policy. How about a conversation about how we can create and promote a national identity and eradicate poverty. These are tough issues but in Nigeria we like easy answers. The intellectuals and urban class are complicit. My guess is that things will remain the same. Sorrow, tears and blood, dem regular trademark.

SOURCE: THE CABLE