‘US determined to monitor NKorean nukes’
Alilat
Boat capsizing kills 8:
At least eight people from one family have died after their homemade boat sank in central Mozambique, state media reported Tuesday.
Monday’s sinking on a tributary of the Zambezi River in Sofala province came days after nearly 100 people, many of them children, died in one of the country’s worst shipwrecks.
State-run Radio Mozambique said two people survived Tuesday and two were missing, citing Nobre dos Santos, administrator of the district where the latest sinking occurred.
The southern African country’s public broadcaster attributed the accident to “excess weight and bad weather.”
President Filipe Nyusi last week declared three days of mourning after the April 8 disaster, when a ferry overcrowded with residents reportedly fleeing a feared cholera outbreak capsized off Mozambique’s northern coast, killing at least 98 people. (AP)
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EU OKs support for SNA: The Political and Security Committee of the Council of the EU has approved 70 million euros to the resources to support the Somali National Army (SNA) and the military component of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS).
Both actions aim to contribute to the handover of security responsibilities from ATMIS to SNA, by allowing the former to fulfil its mandate while strengthening the capacities of the latter, said the EU council in a press statement.
For ATMIS, the agreed support would mostly contribute to the troop allowances of the African soldiers deployed in Somalia, over the period July 1, 2021 - Dec 31, 2023, previous support under the EPF amounted to 270 million euros. (KUNA)
❑ ❑ ❑ ‘$630 million for Ethiopia’:
A United Nations-backed gathering raised pledges of almost $630 million for Ethi
SEOUL, South Korea, April 17, (Agencies): The United States and its allies are discussing options “both inside and outside the UN system” to create a new mechanism for monitoring North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, the American ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday.
Russia last month vetoed a UN resolution in a move that effectively abolished monitoring by UN experts of Security Council sanctions against North Korea, which prompted Western accusations that Moscow was acting to shield its arms purchases from North Korea to fuel its war in Ukraine.
“I look forward to engaging with both the Republic of Korea and Japan, but like-minded (countries) as well, on trying to develop options both inside the U.N. as well as outside the U.N. The point here is that we cannot allow the work that the panel of experts were doing to lapse,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a news conference in Seoul, using the formal name for South Korea.
Thomas-Greenfield didn’t provide specific details about US discussions with allies and other partners, including whether an alternative monitoring regime would more likely be established through the U.N. General Assembly or with an independent entity outside of the UN.
❑ ❑ ❑ NKorea buys China cams:
North Korea is putting surveillance cameras in schools and workplaces and collecting fingerprints, photographs and other biometric information from its citizens in a technology-driven push to monitor its population even more closely, a report said Tuesday.
The state’s growing use of digital surveillance tools, which combine equipment imported from China with domestically developed software, threatens to erase many of the small spaces North Koreans have left to engage in private business activities, access foreign media and secretly criticize their government, the researchers wrote.
opia’s humanitarian crisis on Tuesday but fell short of the $1 billion sought to help feed and support millions of people facing conflict and climate change in
But the isolated country’s digital ambitions have to contend with poor electricity supplies and low network connectivity.
❑ ❑ ❑ US, China discuss army ties:
Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun stated on Wednesday that China and the US are committed to stabilizing and improving bilateral relations, emphasizing the importance of their militaries as a cornerstone for maintaining stability.
Dong made the remarks during a video call with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday. He underscored that the Taiwan question was at the core of China’s core interests, which brook no compromise, said State-run Xinhua News Agency.
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army stands firm against any activities seeking “Taiwan independence” or external support for such separatist actions,” the minister said, noting the overall stability in the South China Sea
Africa’s second most populous country.
The United States, Ethiopia’s leading humanitarian donor, warned that its resources are “increasingly stretched.”
situation.
Plane flies thru Taiwan Strait:
The US 7th Fleet said a Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, a day after US and Chinese defense chiefs held their first talks since Nov. 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions.
The patrol and reconaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release.
“By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations,” the release said.
Although the critical 160 kilometer(100 mile-) wide strait that divides China from the self-governing island democracy is international waters, China considers the passage of foreign military aircraft and ships through it a challenge to its sovereignty.
The UK, the second-largest donor, said Ethiopia risks being ”overshadowed by other humanitarian crises globally.” (AP)
❑ ❑ ❑ Journo expelled from Algeria:
An Algerian journalist was expelled from the country after flying in from France and not being allowed to leave the airport as journalists continue to face challenges reporting in Algeria.
Farid Alilat, a writer for the Frenchlanguage magazine Jeune Afrique, wrote on Facebook that he spent 11 hours in police custody on Saturday at the airport before being boarded onto a plane and sent to France, where he has a residency permit.
Alilat said he regularly takes flights from Paris to Algiers to report on Algeria, where he has for years been a well-known journalist due to his work for Frenchlanguage daily newspapers including Liberté, which was shuttered in 2022 amid financial problems and scuffles with the government and Algeria’s state-owned oil company, both of which are major advertisers for the country’s newspapers.
In a lengthy post in which he wrote of his deportation as if he were reporting on it, Alilat alleged that police officers on the tarmac in Algiers told him that they were acting on orders “from above.” (AP)