CANBERRA, Australia: Political instability in Niger resulting from a military takeover that deposed the president this week threatens the economic support provided by Washington to the African nation, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Saturday.
Members of the Niger military announced on Wednesday they had deposed democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum and on Friday named Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani as the country’s new leader, adding Niger to a growing list of military regimes in West Africa’s Sahel region.
Blinken, who is in Australia as part of a Pacific tour, said the continued security and economic arrangements that Niger has with the US hinged on the release of Bazoum and “the immediate restoration of the democratic order in Niger.”
“Our economic and security partnership with Niger — which is significant, hundreds of millions of dollars — depends on the continuation of the democratic governance and constitutional order that has been disrupted by the actions in the last few days,” Blinken said. “So that assistance, that support, is in clear jeopardy as a result of these actions, which is another reason why they need to be immediately reversed.”
Blinken stopped short of calling the military actions in Niger a coup, a designation that could result in the African country losing millions of dollars of military aid and assistance.
Speaking in Brisbane, Blinken said he had spoken with President Bazoum on Saturday but did not provide details. He cited the support of the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and other regional entities in trying to bring an end to the unrest.
“The very significant assistance that we have in place that’s making a material difference in the lives of the people of Niger is clearly in jeopardy and we’ve communicated that as clearly as we possibly can to those responsible for disrupting the constitutional order and Niger’s democracy,” Blinken said.
Blinken said the US Embassy in Niger had accounted for the safety of all staff members and their families, while issuing a security alert advising US citizens in the country to limit unnecessary movements and avoid areas impacted by the coup.
The military group that conducted the coup, calling itself the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country, said its members remained committed to engaging with the international and national community.
“This is as a result of the continuing degradation of the security situation, the bad economic and social governance,” air force Col. Major Amadou Abdramane said in the video released by the coup leaders Wednesday. He said aerial and land borders were closed and a curfew was in place until the situation stabilized.
Bazoum was elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France.
Niger is seen as the last reliable partner for the West in efforts to battle jihadis linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group in Africa’s Sahel region, where Russia and Western countries have vied for influence in the fight against extremism.
France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who conduct joint operations with Niger’s military, while the US and other European countries have helped train the nation’s troops.
Blinken says US economic support for Niger is at risk as military takeover threatens stability
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Blinken says US economic support for Niger is at risk as military takeover threatens stability
- Blinken stopped short of calling the military actions in Niger a coup, a designation that could result in the African country losing millions of dollars of military aid and assistance
What’s next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court’s ruling
Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with more than a century of precedent.
The high court’s ruling sends cases challenging the president’s birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of the president’s policy remains uncertain.
Here’s what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court’s ruling and what happens next.
What does birthright citizenship mean?
Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally.
The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, in part to ensure that Black people, including former slaves, had citizenship.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,” the amendment states.
Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the US to Chinese parents, was refused re-entry into the US after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the US, no matter their parents’ legal status.
It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of US law, with only a handful of exceptions, such as for children born in the US to foreign diplomats.
Trump has long said he wants to do away with birthright citizenship
Trump’s executive order, signed in January, seeks to deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are living in the US illegally or temporarily. It’s part of the hard-line immigration agenda of the president, who has called birthright citizenship a “magnet for illegal immigration.”
Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” – saying it means the US can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally.
A series of federal judges have said that’s not true, and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” US District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing earlier this year in his Seattle courtroom.
In Greenbelt, Maryland, a Washington suburb, US District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that “the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed” Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship.
Is Trump’s order constitutional? The justices didn’t say
The high court’s ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge’s authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued want to usurp the president’s authority with rulings blocking his priorities around immigration and other matters.
But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump’s bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order.
“The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges’ decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor.
Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is “very confident” that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case.
Questions and uncertainty swirl around next steps
The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps.
The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump’s order.
But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor.
“It’s not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,” said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned the court’s dissenting opinion, urged the lower courts to “act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court’s prompt review” in cases “challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order.”
Opponents of Trump’s order warned there would be a patchwork of polices across the states, leading to chaos and confusion without nationwide relief.
“Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports refugees and migrants. “By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear.”
Russian strike on Ukraine’s Odesa kills two, wounds 14
- Moscow has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine
- Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war
KYiV: A Russian drone strike on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa killed two people and wounded 14, including children, local authorities said on Saturday.
Moscow has stepped up drone and missile attacks on Ukraine and peace talks initiated by the United States to end the three-year conflict have stalled.
“Rescuers pulled the bodies of two people from the rubble who died as a result of a hostile drone strike on a residential building,” Odesa Governor Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.
The night-time strike wounded 14 people, Kiper said, adding that “three of them children.”
Separately, authorities in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region said one person was killed and three others were wounded in Russian strikes over the past day.
“Russian troops targeted critical and social infrastructure and residential areas in the region,” the Kherson’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram early on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Russia’s offensive, which has forced millions from their homes and devastated much of eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has launched retaliatory strikes on Russia throughout the war.
The Russian defense ministry said on Saturday its air defense had shot down 31 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Moscow also said it had captured another village in the Donetsk region, which the Kremlin has claimed as part of Russia since late 2022.
Russia has demanded Ukraine cede more land and give up Western military support as a precondition to peace – terms Kyiv says are unacceptable.
Europe bakes in summer’s first heatwave as continent warms
- Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment
MARSEILLES: Sweating Europeans braced on Saturday for the first heatwave of the northern hemisphere summer, as climate change pushes the world’s fastest-warming continent’s thermometers increasingly into the red.
Temperatures are set to rise to 37 degrees Celsius (99 degrees Fahrenheit) in Rome, driving the Eternal City’s many tourists and Catholic pilgrims to the Vatican alike toward the Italian capital’s some 2,500 public fountains for refreshment.
With residents of the southern port city of Marseille expected to have to cope with temperatures flirting with 40C (104F), authorities in France’s second-largest city ordered public swimming pools to be made free of charge to help residents beat the Mediterranean heat.
Two-thirds of Portugal will be on high alert on Sunday for extreme heat and forest fires with 42C (108F) expected in the capital Lisbon, while visitors to — and protesters against — Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s Friday wedding in Venice likewise sweltered under the summer sun.
“I try not to think about it, but I drink a lot of water and never stay still, because that’s when you get sunstroke,” Sriane Mina, an Italian student, told AFPTV on Friday in Venice.
Meanwhile Spain, which has in past years seen a series of deadly summer blazes ravaging the Iberian peninsula, is expecting peak temperatures in excess of 40C (104F) across most of the country from Sunday.
Scientists have long warned that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating up the world with disastrous consequences for the environment, with Europe’s ever-hotter and increasingly common blistering summer heatwaves a direct result of that warming.
With peaks of 39C (102F) expected in Naples and Palermo, Sicily has ordered a ban on outdoor work in the hottest hours of the day, as has the Liguria region in northern Italy.
The country’s trade unions are campaigning to extend the measure to other parts of the country.
The heatwave comes hot on the heels of a series of tumbling records for extreme heat, including Europe’s hottest March ever, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate monitor.
As a result of the planet’s warming, extreme weather events including hurricanes, droughts, floods and heatwaves like this weekend’s have become more frequent and intense, scientists warn.
By some estimates 2024, the hottest year in recorded history so far, saw worldwide disasters which cost more than $300 billion.
UK distances new spy chief from ‘Nazi’ grandfather
- The Daily Mail newspaper reported this week that her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski defected from the Soviet Union’s Red Army to become a Nazi informant in the Chernigiv region of modern day Ukraine
LONDON: The British government has distanced the incoming head of its foreign intelligence service from her grandfather following reports he was a Nazi spy known as “the butcher.”
Blaise Metreweli will in the autumn become the first woman to lead MI6 in its 116-year-old history, the British government announced earlier this month.
The Daily Mail newspaper reported this week that her grandfather Constantine Dobrowolski defected from the Soviet Union’s Red Army to become a Nazi informant in the Chernigiv region of modern-day Ukraine.
The newspaper said German archives showed Dobrowolski was known as “the Butcher” or “Agent No 30” by Wehrmacht commanders.
“Blaise Metreweli neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement.
“Blaise’s ancestry is characterised by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood.
“It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today’s hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.”
The Daily Mail said Dobrowolski had a 50,000 ruble bounty placed on him by Soviet leaders, and was dubbed the “worst enemy of the Ukrainian people.”
He also sent letters to superiors saying he “personally” took part “in the extermination of the Jews,” the newspaper added.
The head of MI6 is the only publicly named member of the organization and reports directly to the foreign minister.
Metreweli, 47, will be the 18th head of MI6.
Like her predecessors she will be referred to as “C,” not “M” as the chief is called in the James Bond film franchise.
African Union says DR Congo-Rwanda deal ‘milestone’ toward peace
NAIROBI: The African Union said on Saturday a peace deal signed between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda was a “significant milestone” in bringing peace to the deeply troubled region.
For more than 30 years the eastern DRC has been riven by conflict, which has intensified in recent years with the advance of an armed militia backed by Rwanda.
A statement said AU Commission head Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, who witnessed the signing of the deal in Washington on Friday, “welcomed this significant milestone and commended all efforts aimed at advancing peace, stability, & reconciliation in the region.”
It said he “appreciated the constructive & supportive role played by the US & the State of Qatar in facilitating dialogue & consensus that led to this development.”
The agreement comes after the M23, an ethnic Tutsi rebel force supported by Rwanda, sprinted across the mineral-rich east of the DRC this year, seizing vast territory including the key city of Goma.
The deal does not explicitly address the gains of the M23 in the area torn by decades of on-off war but calls for Rwanda to end “defensive measures” it has taken.
Rwanda has denied offering the M23 military support but has demanded an end to another armed group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which was established by ethnic Hutus involved in the massacres of Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The agreement calls for the “neutralization” of the FDLR.
