US ambassador to UN heading to Africa as Biden woos continent
UNITED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is the second Cabinet member heading to Africa as part of President Joe Biden’s big push to engage with the world’s second-largest continent.
The U.S. Mission to the U.N. said Sunday she will travel to Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya starting Jan. 25 “to affirm and strengthen our partnerships with key current and former U.N. Security Council members.”
Thomas-Greenfield’s visit follows last week’s start of a 10-day African visit by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She arrived in Dakar, Senegal, late Wednesday and will also visit Zambia and South Africa.
Biden announced at the end of a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December that he will visit sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, the first trip to the region by a U.S. leader in a decade.
The summit and trip are aimed at strengthening U.S. relations with Africa, where China has surpassed the U.S. in trade and is aiming to increase its military presence, and Russia has military ties with the authorities in Mali and Central African Republic.
Biden stressed at the summit that he is serious about increasing U.S. attention to the continent and told the 49 African leaders attending the meeting in Washington that “Africa belongs at the table” in every conversation of global consequences.
The first stop on the trip for Thomas-Greenfield, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, is Ghana, which is in the second year of a two-year term as an elected member of the U.N. Security Council.
Syria building collapse:
A building collapsed in a neighborhood in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo early Sunday, killing at least 16 people, including one child, and injuring four others, state media reported.
The five-story building, housing about 30 people, was in the Sheikh Maksoud neighborhood under the control of the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. It collapsed overnight, according to the report, after water leakages weakened the structure’s foundation.
Dozens of firefighters, first responders and residents covered in debris and dust were searching through the rubble for the remaining residents with drills and a bulldozer.
Some relatives of the tenants waited anxiously nearby, while others mourned at the entrance of a nearby hospital as the bodies arrived in ambulances and in the backs of trucks.
Syrian Democratic Forces Commander Mazloum Abdi in a statement condemned the Syrian government forces that control the neighborhoods surrounding Sheikh Maksoud for “banning for years the entry of basic materials into the neighborhood, obstructing efforts to stabilize and restore life in the area.”
Protests in Turkey: Outrage over a Quran-burning protest in Sweden produced a second day of protests in Turkey, reflecting tensions between the two countries.
Some 250 people gathered outside the Swedish Consulate in Istanbul, where a photo of Danish anti-Islam activist Rasmus Paludan was set on fire. Paludan burned Islam’s holy book outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on
Saturday, sparking protests in Istanbul and Ankara that night.
Participants in Sunday’s event carried green flags featuring the Islamic proclamation of faith and banner that said “We condemn Sweden’s state-supported Islamophobia.” A sign on a window of the Swedish Consulate read, “We do not share that book-burning idiot’s view.”
The protests have renewed concerns about Turkey holding up Sweden and Finland’s bid to join NATO. Turkey has not yet ratified the Nordic nations’ memberships in the military alliance, saying Sweden needs to address Ankara’s security concerns.
Turkish officials slammed Sweden for allowing the Quran-burning protest, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not comment on it during his weekend speeches.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson tweeted late Saturday that freedom of expression was crucial to democracy but added that
“what is legal is not necessarily appropriate.”
Somalia killings: Al-Qaida-linked extremists stormed a regional government office in Somalia’s capital Sunday, and five civilians were killed, the government said.
The founder of the Aamin ambulance service, Abdulkadir Adan, told The Associated Press his team collected 16 wounded people from the scene.
The al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility for the assault on the Banadir Regional Administration headquarters in Mogadishu.
A staff member at the headquarters said the attack began with a suicide bombing before gunmen entered and exchanged fire with security guards. The staffer, Mustafa Abdulle, said most of the workers were rescued by security forces.
Al-Shabab often carries out attacks in Mogadishu. The federal government last year declared “total
war” on the extremist group and has retaken a number of communities the fighters had controlled in central and southern Somalia.
Papal plea: Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned plea, delivered partly in Spanish, for an end to violence in Peru over demands for the resignation of the country’s president.
Addressing some 15,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly appearance at a window of the Apostolic Palace, Francis said: “I invite (you) to pray so that the acts of violence cease in Peru.”
“Violence extinguishes hope for a just solution to the problems,” the pontiff said. “I encourage all sides involved to take up the path of dialogue among brothers in the same nation, in the full respect of human rights and of the rule of law.”
Noting that he was joining in an appeal of Peruvian bishops, Francis switched from Italian to Spanish to exclaim: “No to violence,
from whatever part it comes! No more deaths!”
Records mistake: A county in Washington inadvertently released nearly half a million partial Social Security numbers when responding to a routine public records request in December, according to county officials.
The Pierce County Auditor’s Office, which mistakenly released the sensitive data, said in a news release that the human error was quickly spotted and that the person who received the SSN digits deleted them within two hours. The requester had not asked for the personal information.
Social Security number information was included in a routine request for publicly available voter registration data, which typically includes names, addresses and birth dates. Personally identifiable information, including Social Security number information, which can be used to commit identify theft, is exempt from public disclosure.