(CNN)US special operations forces on Saturday rescued an American citizen taken hostage by armed men earlier this week in Niger and held in northern Nigeria, the Pentagon said.”U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men. This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State. No U.S military personnel were injured during the operation,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement.”We appreciate the support of our international partners in conducting this operation. The United States will continue to protect our people and our interests anywhere in the world.”The mission, which was several hours long, was conducted by the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 who were flown to the region by Air Force special operations, a US official with knowledge of the operation told CNN.The US forces who conducted the mission killed six of the seven captors, the official said. The US believes the captors have no known affiliation with any terror groups operating in the region, and were more likely bandits seeking money.The State Department confirmed earlier this week that a US citizen had been abducted in Niger.Local media outlets reported that the US citizen was a male missionary. CNN has not been able to confirm the citizen’s identity.The governor of the local region where the abduction took place was quoted in various local media and by French media reporting from Niger as saying that six men on motorbikes armed with AK-47s came to the man’s property in the village of Massalata, close to the border with Nigeria.
The governor, Abdourahamane Moussa, told these media outlets that after demanding money, the men took the American citizen with them in the direction of the Nigerian border.The State Department spokesman said that “when a U.S. citizen is missing, we work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts, and we share information with families however we can.”On Saturday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US citizen would be reunited with his family.”Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our military, the support of our intelligence professionals, and our diplomatic efforts, the hostage will be reunited with his family,” Pompeo said in a statement. “We will never abandon any American taken hostage.”President Donald Trump on Saturday thanked the special operations forces for rescuing the American citizen and said more details about the mission would be shared in “a very short period of time.””I want to thank the special forces. We had a tremendous event happen and really these are incredible people that do this,” Trump told reporters as he departed for a day of campaign travel.This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Nicole Gaouette, Tim Lister, Alison Main and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
CSP Catherine Ugorji of the Nigerian police and serving with the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has been selected by the UN as one of two runners-up for the prestigious UN Woman Police Officer of the Year award for 2020.
Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix, in a statement by Oluseyi Soremekun, the National Information Officer of the UN System in Nigeria, said through both her words and actions, UN Police Officer Ugorji exemplifies the best of UN policing.
Of the 1,300 UN policewomen deployed in UN peacekeeping operations, twenty-one were nominated for the award.
Ugorji joined the Nigerian Police in 2003 and served as Criminal Investigator from the local to regional level, Child Protection Officer, Divisional Crime Officer up to Acting Deputy Commander of the Ogudu Police Division in Lagos.
The UN said 1,300 UN policewomen deployed in UN peacekeeping operations, twenty-one were nominated for the award and Chief Inspector Doreen Malambo of Zambia, serving with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), would receive the award.
The award would be presented during a virtual ceremony presided over by Mr Lacroix on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Also, Luis Carrilho, UN Police Advisor, congratulated Ugorji for being chosen as a runner-up and described her leadership of “three Formed Police Units(FPU) in Gao” as remarkable.
“Catherine has introduced tactical operations that have been instrumental in reducing crime in the area, in support of the Malian security forces and the host population.
“In addition to this very demanding role, Chief Superintendent Ugorji has worked diligently to improve living conditions for women police officers so they can serve safely and with dignity,” Carrilho said.
Ugorji was commended for her work to extend the outreach of the FPU to the Ansongo area, “close to the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso border area, where terrorists and spoilers of the Malian peace agreement are increasing their influence.”
It was revealed in the statement that her support for the joint operations with the Malian police, gendarmerie and National Guard have helped to ensure the security of the local population.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the UN Woman Police Officer of the Year award was established in 2011 to recognise the exceptional contributions of female officers to UN peacekeeping and to promote the empowerment of women. (NAN)
Lazarus Chakwera: Malawi's president, credit official facebook
Women’s organizations in country plan to stage nationwide demonstrations against gender imbalance in public appointments
ANKARA
Malawi’s president cut short a three-day visit to Tanzania on Thursday as women’s organizations in his country prepared to stage a nationwide protest over his failure to ensure that women receive a fair share of public appointments.
Lazarus Chakwera, who arrived in Tanzania on Wednesday, left a day earlier than scheduled after holding talks with his counterpart John Magufuli. He also visited the Malawi Cargo Center in Dar es Salaam and held a private meeting with a number of business investors, Tanzania’s local news website The Citizen reported.
State House in Lilongwe confirmed that Chakwera has returned home to deal with the demonstrations organized for Friday by various women’s organizations in the country in protest against “gender imbalance,” regarding it as an urgent domestic priority, according to the report.
The Women’s Manifesto Movement (WMM), comprising several women’s empowerment civil society organizations, are planning to demonstrate against what they consider Chakwera’s failure to fulfill the Gender Equality Act requirement of 60:40 representation of either sex in public appointments, slamming what they considered “systematic discrimination against women in public appointments, Malawi’s Nyasa Times reported.
President Donald Trump has come under criticism on Twitter following his tweet on the reported rescue of an American citizen by U.S. special forces in Nigeria on Saturday morning.
Shortly after news of the rescue broke, Trump took to his Twitter handle to celebrate, saluting “the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation”.
“Last night, our Country’s brave warriors rescued an American hostage in Nigeria.
“Our Nation salutes the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation and celebrates the safe return of yet another American citizen!”, the post reads.
Within minutes, the tweet attracted thousands of reactions with the president’s critics slamming him for allegedly failing to save over 230,000 American lives so far claimed by COVID-19.
“Brave indeed. They volunteered to fight for their country,” replied a follower by the name, Vote Trump Out.
“Shame you couldn’t have saved 200,000 plus lives while you were tweeting,” the follower with the handle @MattTavner, added.
Another critic, Limey McLimeface using the handle @mclimeface, suggested that Trump didn’t know about the operation until the media reported it.
“Took you until now to mention it, you probably only just heard of it, because you’re too busy on your farewell tour, you haven’t done any work in weeks,” McLimeface said.
An American psychologist, Jeffrey Guterman, using the verified account, @JefferyGuterman, called the president “a mass murderer” for spreading the virus with his non-socially-distant campaign rallies.
Guterman shared a Stanford University study, which concluded that 18 rallies addressed by Trump resulted in no fewer than 30,000 “incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19”.
According to the study, conducted by Douglas Bernheim, Nina Buchmann and Zach Freitas-Groff of the Department of Economics, the rallies “likely led to more than 700 deaths”.
“Congratulations, you made America Great Again!,” said Alex Haditaghi,a Canadian entrepreneur and philanthropist.
“U.S. reports world record of more than 100,000 COVID-19 cases in a single day. Coronavirus deaths in U.S. yesterday: 1,031
“Deaths over last seven days: 6,579. Deaths so far: 230,000. COVID-19 Infections in U.S. 9,300,000,” Haditaghi said.
To one Lewis Silberman, the operation was timed to aid the president’s reflection bid.
The president has always defended his administration’s response to the pandemic, arguing that nothing could be done better.
David Wohl, an American actor and supporter of the president, defended him in his reaction to the tweet, suggesting that the rescue operation was making Democrats angry.
“They hate to see Trump succeed and would rather have Americans remain hostages. Real Americans, however, are grateful to Trump and #SealTeam6”, he said.
One Lisa Whitehead replied him, saying it would be “really fantastic if he would quit killing Americans here in the USA!!”.
“Maybe the SEAL team can help him with that, maybe they could stand outside his rallies and make people mask up!!!”, Whitehead added.
(Published in The Nation newspaper of Saturday, October 31st, 2020)
Massacre. This is a weighty word that surely ought not to be used lightly or frivolously. When I checked, synonyms for the word, massacre, include bloodbath, butchery, carnage, death, holocaust, or slaughter. It refers to a large scale, coldblooded murder of human beings. One dictionary defines massacre as ‘an act of complete destruction’. Did such an event involving deaths on an industrial scale occur at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos on the night of Tuesday, October 20? Repeated reports in the local and international media indicate that this was the case. What are the facts of the matter? The Lekki Toll Gate was one of the two major sites in Lagos of the massive #endSARS youth protests which had gripped the national and global imagination for two weeks till the night of October 20.
Exceedingly well organized, focused and disciplined, the protesters had conducted themselves with remarkable decorum, decency and dignity in pursuit of their demand that the dreaded police Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS) should be disbanded and fundamental police reforms instituted. Within days, an ordinarily obdurate Federal Government had acceded to their requests. SARS was disbanded and the other demands of the protesters accepted in principle. But then, the protesters introduced new demands. They were defiant and remained on the streets even though as peaceful and restrained as ever. The longer the protests lasted however, the more extraneous forces intervened and systematically hijacked the protests on a steadily expanding scale across the country. By October 20th, law and order had broken down in large swathes of Lagos. So bad did things get that Police stations were torched, policemen killed and police armories looted with criminals carting away arms and ammunition. Obviously alarmed, the state government declared a curfew. With the police under attack, it apparently had no choice but to request the help of the military in enforcing the curfew.
The curfew was imposed to stem the descent to anarchy, which certainly was not the aim of the protests. Why, then, didn’t the protesters, in line with their law abiding stance, disperse in obedience to the curfew? Had they not at that point crossed the dividing line between legality and illegality? I think so. Even then, was the frenetic shooting by the soldiers to forcibly dislodge the protesters justifiable? The answer is an emphatic no. Were water cannons, tear gas canisters or, at worst, rubber bullets not available even if the protesters were to be forcibly dislodged?
Condemnable as the shooting incident was, did it result in the mass murder of a large number of the Lekki protesters as the dominant narrative claims? A national newspaper claimed in its lead story that 49 persons were killed. Amnesty International reports, magisterially, that 12 persons died in the Lekki incident. The visuals that went viral, which I watched, showed men in the uniform of the Nigerian Army shooting into the air to disperse the protesters. Purported eyewitnesses offer dramatic accounts of soldiers shooting directly at the protesters reportedly with heavy casualties. I asked someone if undeniable large number of corpses would not be seen at the scene if a band of soldiers trained AK 47 machine guns directly on a large number of protesters and shooting them point blank at close range? He claimed that the soldiers evacuated the dead bodies away from the scene. In this social media age, would the same sophisticated mobile equipment that vividly captured the soldiers shooting, despite the lights being allegedly switched off, not also have recorded them evacuating dead bodies?
The Lagos State governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who visited the injured in various hospitals as well as visited mortuaries in Lagos that night, stated in his broadcast the number of persons who were injured and treated at various hospitals which he named, saying that two were successfully operated on while two died subsequently. Many continue to dispute his account preferring alternative narratives utterly lacking in credibility. Happily, even as social media technology has grown in leaps and bounds enabling the medium to more effectively check impunity on the part of public and private authorities, there has also been tremendous advancement in the techniques and facilities for validating the authenticity of material emanating from the social media. PRNigeria, one outfit that has been doing a great job in this regard in Nigeria, has been exhaustively and clinically interrogating diverse claims on the purported Lekki Massacre. Its findings have been revealing.
PRNigeria’s Editorial Team, according to the media outfit’s Assistant Editor, Mahmood Abdulsalam, found that “So far, most of the footages we have collected, over 100 in all, showing dead protesters and several others wounded, when we subject them to our reverse imagery testing tools, indicated they were not recent while others are manipulated images and doctored videos. We also observe circulation of old pictures of victims injured and killed during violent skirmishes, unrelated to the #endSARS demonstrations across the country”.
For instance, PRNigeria found out that a Nollywood movie star, Eniola Badmus, who was allegedly shot in the stomach and died at the Lekki Toll Gate, had denied the social media reports. She wrote on her Instagram page that “Against all speculations about me being shot dead at the unspeakable event that happened at the toll gate a few hours ago, I would like to inform you guys that I Eniola Badmus is hale and hearty. I couldn’t make it there today to lend my voice on the #endSARS movement”. In another case, a young man, Iraoye Godwin, a native of Otu-Auchi in Edo state who was reported to have been killed also at the Lekki Toll Gate posted a video on twitter denying the report. Again, a photo of a man carrying a dead lady wrapped in Nigerian flag as posted by Yemi Alade was an image from a movie acted with the theme, “Heal our land, OH LORD”.
According to the PRNigeria report, “There was also a video of one Lucia Adu who was celebrated as a martyr at Lekki Massacre after dancing in the clip. Some of the social media posts celebrating her ‘Martyrdom’ read: “She was dancing an hour before she was murdered by the Nigerian armed forces…a bullet hit her in the face and ripped half her face off”. Latest investigation shows that Lucia Adu died from an accident with a stationary truck on 20th October, 2020. This is also confirmed by a new fact checking twitter handle on #endSARS – http:/twitter.com/end SARSFctcheck”.
The Executive Director of PRNigeria, Mr. Yushua A. Shuaib, a humanitarian worker and crisis management communicator who has worked extensively with the media, the security and response agencies over the last decade, reached out to media executives in various traditional and online mediums, whom he specifically named, to help in facilitating the gathering of evidence on the alleged massacre. In his words, “In fairness to the media and civil society groups, they all spoke about relying on eyewitness accounts mostly from celebrities and social media influencers without subjecting the information received to rigorous verification. There was also the admission that there was no authenticated footage of the said “massacre” at Lekki Toll Gate so far”.
Continuing, Shuaib writes, “In the aftermath of this confusion, the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have continued to flag several contents containing the alleged images of the Lekki Massacre as false information, after these were subjected to scrutiny by independent fact checkers”.
It was interesting watching Osai Ojigho, Country Director of Amnesty International in Nigeria, when she appeared on The Arise Interview television programme to speak about the organization’s claim that at least 12 people were killed at the Lekki Toll Plaza. As she rambled on extensively, the anchor of the programme, Charles Aniagolu, interjected saying “I think the point here Osai is that you’ve made some very good points there about the expectations of the people from the army and the government but people also want to be absolutely 100% sure about the evidence Amnesty International is putting forward with regard to these killings. Have you actually seen evidence of dead bodies? Can we understand how Amnesty International came to the conclusion that 12 people were shot?”
Again, Osai Ojigho spoke at length on authenticated accounts of eyewitnesses, the claim that the soldiers reportedly prevented ambulances from accessing the site and also the fact that the Nigerian army had a record of such killings previously such as the shooting of hundreds of Shiite Muslims in Kaduna in 2015. Again, Charles Aniagolu was probing and insistent. He said. “Osai, I am sorry that I have to interrupt you but you are a lawyer and a lot of what you’ve said in the last few minutes sounds like circumstantial evidence but there’s got to be prima facie evidence when allegations are made against the Nigerian army and police. A lot of people will agree anecdotally with what you’re saying but they’ll still want to see concrete evidence either of dead bodies or families of dead ones coming out to claim their loved ones have been killed or the names of people who have been killed”.
Osai responded that Amnesty International indeed has some names but will need the consent of their families to release such names! Can you imagine such utter nonsense, mischief and lack of seriousness? In the words of PRNigeria’s Yushau Shuab, “Equally disturbing was the fact that despite the increasingly widespread usage of the word massacre to describe the Lekki incident, no single family had stepped forward (even till date) to report the loss of a relative during the Lekki shooting”. So much for facts, fantasies and the Lekki Massacre.
US President, Donald Trump is in high spirits after an American citizen Philip Walton was spirited out of from the den of the Boko Haram terrorists in Sambisa Forest, by a team of SEAL forces in a stealth operation.
Forces including navy Seals rescued Walton, 27, who was abducted on Tuesday from his home in neighbouring southern Niger, two US officials said on condition of anonymity, adding that no US troops were hurt.
Philip Walton, who was abducted by a criminal gang, was rescued by SEAL Team 6, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. Officials had feared the gang would sell him to terrorists operating in the region.
“U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men,” Chief Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a statement Saturday. “This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State.”
The statement said no U.S military personnel were injured in the operation.
Walton, described by a defence official as an American farmer, was abducted in Niger earlier this week, Martin reports. He was then taken across the border to Nigeria, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The criminal gang that captured Walton was based in the small village of Niamey in southwestern Niger, Martin reported. They apparently intended to hold him hostage for a ransom.
Six captors were involved, and five were killed during Walton’s rescue while one got away, according to a defence official.
A defence official said the raid was carried out with the cooperation and support of both Niger and Nigeria.
President Trump appeared to praise the rescue on Twitter Saturday morning. “Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today. Details to follow!” the president tweeted.
Last night, our Country’s brave warriors rescued an American hostage in Nigeria. Our Nation salutes the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation and celebrates the safe return of yet another American citizen!
“The United States is committed to the safe return of all U.S. citizens taken captive,” Pompeo said in a statement Saturday. “We delivered on that commitment late last night in Nigeria, where some of our bravest and most skilled warriors rescued a U.S. citizen after a group of armed men took him, hostage, across the border in Niger.”
“Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our military, the support of our intelligence professionals, and our diplomatic efforts, the hostage will be reunited with his family,” Pompeo said.
Joe Biden and his son Hunter talk every day, typically a fast check-in initiated by the Democratic presidential nominee, often from the back of a car between campaign stops. Although Biden tries to touch base with his two grown children and five grandchildren once a day, doling out “I love you,” Hunter Biden is a special case.
“My only surviving son,” is how the former vice president refers to his “Hunt,” whose battles with addiction have made for a long-running high-wire act within the Biden universe.
The stresses of Biden’s presidential campaign have made an already complicated father-son relationship even more so. From the outset of the race, President Donald Trump and his allies have made Hunter Biden’s business dealings a centrepiece of their efforts to portray his father as an unscrupulous swamp presence.
FILE — Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, at his art studio in Los Angeles, Nov. 1, 2019.
Some of the attacks are unfounded, but the facts of Hunter Biden’s troubled life have provided the president with ample fodder. Hunter Biden took a highly paid position with a Ukrainian oligarch regarded by the United States as corrupt and later acknowledged he most likely got the job because his father was overseeing U.S. policy in the country at the time. He went into business with a number of partners who have subsequently been convicted of unrelated crimes. And his struggles with addiction have contributed to the less admirable lines on his résumé, including his abrupt departure from the Navy Reserve in 2014.
Beyond the attacks, aides say the former vice president agonizes over how his hyper-public position has added to the formidable burdens of being his remaining son. If Hunter Biden sounds down on the phone, Biden aides say, it can send his father into a funk and inflict a melancholy that lingers.
Joe Biden will rarely bring up Hunter Biden himself, they say, although others certainly will. When a reporter asks a sceptical question about Hunter Biden, the mood in the room shifts. Aides become tense knowing that Joe Biden might lash out. “You’re a damn liar, man,” Joe Biden said, jarringly, at a December campaign event in Iowa after a voter suggested he had sent his son to Ukraine to “get a job and work for a gas company” in order to gain access to that country’s ruling class.
“It’s almost a cliché now,” said Ted Kaufman, Joe Biden’s longtime chief of staff and short-term successor in the Senate after Biden became vice president in 2009. “Joe Biden used to say this all the time, and he meant it: ‘Delaware can always get another senator, but the kids can’t get another father.’ His rule was that if one of his kids ever called, we were told to get Biden no matter where he was.’’
In his more raw and vulnerable moments, friends say, Biden will let himself wonder if he might have fallen short as a parent. Despite all of his efforts, the nightly Amtrak commutes from Washington to Wilmington and the obvious mutual affection, they say he wishes he could have done more to protect his children and steer them clear of harm.
As is well known, Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash a few weeks after he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. Beau, then 3, and Hunter, 2, were badly injured but survived. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, and Biden has described his late son — an Iraq War veteran and a former attorney general of Delaware — as his hero, inspiration and role model. He has spoken expansively of Beau Biden’s example, military service and his own grief over his eldest son’s death.
Hunter Biden, now 50, is a tougher subject. He has been the source of fatherly anguish as well as a Republican fixation. His struggles with drug and alcohol and messy family and business entanglements have been relentlessly chronicled. After Beau Biden died, Hunter Biden became romantically involved with his brother’s widow, Hallie, creating a tabloid-ready humiliation and internal family fractures.
Trump now calls his opponent’s son a “criminal.” At campaign rallies, the mention of Hunter Biden prompts “lock him up” chants.
Publicly, Joe Biden has been reluctant to discuss Hunter Biden except to reaffirm his love and support, and to assert that his son did nothing wrong. “The good thing is, Hunter, God love him, he is the best he’s been since Beau passed away,” Joe Biden said in an interview. This was back in January, a few weeks before the Iowa caucuses. Joe Biden was in the back seat of a black Suburban heading from Des Moines to a rally in nearby Indianola.
In subsequent months, Joe Biden’s campaign would be routed in the early primaries before being resurrected in South Carolina, grounded by the coronavirus and propelled to the Democratic nomination. Current polling gives Joe Biden a better-than-decent shot at becoming the president-elect next week. All the while, Hunter Biden has made for unnerving background music and a steady din of concern for the patriarch of a family that has seen its share of public grief.
“I’m saying sorry to him, and he says, ‘I’m the one who’s sorry,’” Hunter Biden said in a sprawling and confessional interview last year with The New Yorker. “And we have an ongoing debate about who is more sorry.” Hunter Biden declined to comment for this article.
For all of the pain surrounding Beau Biden’s death, Joe Biden is much more eager to publicly discuss him than Hunter Biden. Beau Biden is, in a way, a safer space — a source of pride and even an idealized version of himself. “I think Joe would be the first to acknowledge that Beau was an upgrade,” President Barack Obama said to laughter in his eulogy for Beau Biden. “Joe 2.0.”
Friends wonder what it must be like for Hunter Biden — in addition to his portrayal as a problem child — to hear his brother so repeatedly canonized as his father’s ideal. If Beau Biden is a golden boy to be boasted about on a debate stage, what does that make Hunter Biden if not an easy pivot to shame?
“He got the Bronze Star,” Joe Biden said in his first debate with Trump, listing Beau Biden’s accomplishments, as he often does.
“Really?” Trump said, interrupting. “Are you talking about Hunter?”
“I’m talking about my son, Beau Biden,” the former vice president shot back.
“I don’t know Beau, I know Hunter,” Trump said, then brought up Hunter Biden’s drug use.
Joe Biden was ready. “My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem,’’ he said. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him.”
When he talks about Hunter Biden, Joe Biden often speaks of him in terms of Beau Biden and the survivors bond they shared. “Beau and Hunt and I, there was like a steel band that ran through our chests connecting us,” Joe Biden said in the interview in January. “While Beau was literally taking his last breaths, we were sitting on his bed, me on one side, Hunter on the other, holding hands in a circle.”
Beau Biden’s death was more devastating for Hunter Biden than anyone else, Kaufman said. “They were together all the time,” he said. “They had this incredible, remarkable bond.”
When the boys were young, Joe Biden was either bouncing back and forth between Washington and Wilmington or taking them along with him. “As a single man, he never seemed to go anywhere without one of his boys,” said Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate majority leader. From his own experience, Reid said he was painfully aware of how complicated it could be for the adult children of public figures, especially those who entered or at least brushed up against the family business.
Over the years Hunter Biden took on roles that intersected with his father’s political career, including working with a Delaware-based credit card issuer, working at the Commerce Department under President Bill Clinton and working as a lobbyist on behalf of various universities, associations and companies.
After Joe Biden became Obama’s running mate in 2008, Hunter Biden terminated his lobbying registrations, which included a company that had lobbied the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which his father had served, about online gambling issues.
Months after his father became vice president, Hunter Biden joined with Christopher Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, then a senator, and Devon Archer, a Kerry family friend, to create a network of investment and consulting firms.
Hunter Biden and Archer pursued business with international entities that had a stake in U.S. foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection.
Joe Biden’s all-purpose rejoinder to any criticism of Hunter Biden is to simply reassert his fatherly devotion.
“It was the kind of love that you have when you’ve gone through a tragedy together,” said Robert Buccini, a close friend of the Biden family who was inseparable from Beau and Hunter. “The vice president and his boys were the three survivors. He would always look them in the eye and say, ‘I love you.’ And the boys would say ‘I love you Dad.’ I think in that generation, it’s really unique for a father to be that expressive.”
One of the recurring tropes around Joe Biden’s candidacy is that the grief his family has suffered tends to put the slings of a campaign into perspective. In other words, what on a campaign could be crueller than what the Biden family has already faced?
Joe Biden has said as much. “That’s true,” he acknowledged in January. “Look, the idea of losing an election, losing an argument, losing — I mean, Christ.”
Still, no one can deny the gravity of Joe Biden’s current enterprise, least of all him. And it’s not as if he is above lofty rhetoric of his own, like casting this election as some epic “battle for the soul of America.” The presence of Trump on the ballot makes this election a different beast. “If I lose,” Joe Biden said, “it’s not as if it’s just, ‘OK, so I lost a race to John McCain, or lost to whoever.’”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
The Nassiriya Organisation, a northern-based group, has instituted a suit to compel Nasir el- Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, to contest the 2023 presidential election.
The governor had previously said he had no interest in the presidential seat and would not contest because the next president should be a southerner, as Nigerian politics is based on rotation.
But speaking with journalists at the weekend, Garkuwa Babuga, national leader of the organisation and zonal vice chairman of the All Progressive Congress(APC), said the group headed to a high court in Kaduna after el- Rufai declined their request to contest the election.
Babuga, who said the group has members in 21 states, said the governor is the best candidate based on “his track records of achievements.”
“Many people are yearning for the el-Rufai presidency. I don’t have to overblow the trumpet, you all have seen his developmental strides in the FCT and in Kaduna state. He is the best person for the villa in 2023,” he said.
“Let’s continue to be loyal and support President Buhari to complete his tenure. But el-Rufai as president and successor to Buhari will further unite Nigeria.
“We are appealing to our elders in the North, please forget party differences, we should join forces and rally round el-Rufai so that he contest and win the presidency.
“Although he did not answer our call, we have gone to court so as to compel El-Rufai to vie for the number one seat in Nigeria.
“The next sitting on the matter is on the 2nd of November, 2020. We have sought the legal services of Barrister El-Zubair. We will all be in the court.”
Sierra Leone’s Supreme Court, in a ruling delivered on Friday, has convicted human rights lawyer and social commentator, Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marrah, for criticising a decision of the court in a social media post.
A panel of five judges had, on Monday, upheld a presidential appointment to the position of Commissioner of the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
The appointment had been criticised by some on the grounds that the appointee, Francis Ben Kaifala, did not meet the criteria necessary to qualify to become a high court judge. The position requires a minimum of 10 years’ legal practice, and Marrah had raised this observation through his Twitter account on October 26.
“Politics has yet again been elevated above the law in today’s judgment by the Supreme Court. This is egregious chipping of the sanctity of the law,” he wrote.
“We raised this same eyebrow when the Vice President’s illegal sacking was judicially laundered. Only those allied with politics will jubilate today.”
The Supreme Court then issued a bench warrant suspending his rights to practise before any courts in Sierra Leone and suspending the rule that says lawyers can not be arrested within court premises “until the arrest of the said Augustine Sorie-Sengbe Marah”. The same day, President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone abolished defamation as a crime.
The Nations news website published that Marrah was reported to have gone into hiding after judges at the Supreme Court ordered his arrest and stripped him of his immunity against being apprehended within court premises.
The court convicted Marrah on a charge of contempt and ordered him to retract his publication and make an apology to be published at his expense in three national dailies. The Council of the Bar was also asked to discipline him for professional misconduct.
Many Sierra Leoneans took to social media to challenge the court’s decision.
“Deeply concerned about the safety and wellbeing of @Soe_Marrah, an activist from Sierra Leone,” tweeted Vickie Remoe. “A judge has issued a bench warrant and barred him from practice ― his crime? Exercising freedom of speech. Asking that you bear witness to this and #StandWithAugustineMarah.”
Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, also took to Twitter to share his displeasure on the case.
“There are many things wrong with what the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone did to @soe_marrah. First, even assuming there was contempt here, it was not in the face of the court. The correct process is for a complaint to be lodged with the Attorney-General who will initiate charges,” he observed on Saturday.
“Second, given that contempt outside the face of the court is a matter for the Attorney-General, the Supreme Court, as an appellate instance, lacks first instance or summary jurisdiction over it. The place to prosecute it is the High Court, not the Supreme Court.
“Third, the judges were out of line when they insisted on requiring @soe_marrah to violate his constitutional entitlement against self-incrimination.
“Fourth, having sentenced him to punishment, the judges exposed their dispositions to the flaw of the prohibition against double jeopardy by insisting on requiring the General Bar Council to discipline @Soe_Marrah, when they could easily have just done that alone to begin with.”
He criticised the Supreme Court for disregarding provisions of the country’s constitution that guaranteed the freedom of expression and noted that the case is part of a trend of judges using “the cover of judicial power & appearance of legal process to foreclose accountability”.
A campaign, I Stand With Lawyer Augustine Sengbeh Marrah, has been trending on social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists joined in the condemnation of the court’s decision, calling for its reversal. But, in yet another sign of division within the legal profession, the Sierra Leone Bar Association appeared to blame the situation on Marrah for his failure to respect the court.
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