DJIBOUTI: Drought and famine seem to be fueling a resurgence of piracy off the coast of Somalia, the United States’ top military chief in Africa said Sunday.
Half a dozen pirate attacks have been reported in the region over the last month, after falling to zero in recent years, said US general Thomas Waldhauser.
“Some of the reasons we see for that have to do with the drought and famine,” because some of the vessels seized have been carrying food and oil, he said.
The targeted boats have been small and “very lucrative targets for pirates,” he told a press conference with US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Djibouti.
The US military is advising shipping companies and ensuring they stick to security guidelines and do not lower their guard, he said.
“The bottom line is that there have been half a dozen or so” attacks but “we are not ready to say that there is a trend,” he added.
Mattis traveled on Sunday to Djibouti, a tiny strategic state in the Horn of Africa which hosts the only permanent US military base on the African continent, Camp Lemonnier.
Somali pirates began staging attacks in 2005, seriously disrupting a major international shipping route and costing the global economy billions of dollars.
At the peak of the piracy crisis in January 2011, 736 hostages and 32 boats were held.
Though anti-piracy measures ended attacks on commercial vessels, fishing boats have continued to face attacks sporadically.
Famine fuels resurgence of Somali piracy: US general
Famine fuels resurgence of Somali piracy: US general
Argentine judge orders arrest of Nicaragua’s Ortega over human rights violations
- The warrant, lawyer Dario Richarte said, also applies to Ortega’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo
BUENOS AIRES: An Argentine judge has ordered the arrest of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega over his alleged “systematic violation of human rights,” a lawyer who filed a case against the leader told AFP on Monday.
The warrant, lawyer Dario Richarte said, also applies to Ortega’s wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, and is based on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows for nations to prosecute crimes against humanity outside their country of origin.
Federal Judge Ariel Lijo has also ordered the arrest of a dozen other people linked to Ortega’s rule.
The crimes Ortega and his wife are accused of include murder, forced disappearances, torture and “deportation or forced transfer of population,” Richarte said.
The complaint had been filed in 2022 by a group of prosecutors from the University of Buenos Aires.
Ortega, a 79-year-old ex-guerrilla, has engaged in increasingly authoritarian practices since returning to power in 2007, seizing control of all branches of the state.
His government has targeted critics, shutting down more than 5,000 non-governmental organizations since a crackdown on 2018 protests that the United Nations said left more than 300 people dead.
Most independent and opposition media now operate from abroad.
Around 450 politicians, businesspeople, journalists, intellectuals, human rights activists and religious figures have been stripped of their nationality since February 2023 under accusations of “treason.”
Amnesty International’s Americas director Ana Piquer warned earlier this month that nobody in Nicaragua was safe from Ortega’s “repressive machinery.”
“From indigenous leaders, journalists, human rights defenders and anyone seen as a risk to government policies, the authorities continue to consolidate the climate of fear,” she said.
Appeals court upholds verdict in Trump sexual abuse case
- Trump was ordered to pay $2 million for sexual abuse and another $3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carrol
NEW YORK: A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury verdict ordering President-elect Donald Trump to pay $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
A New York jury found after a nine-day civil trial last year that the former president had sexually abused Carroll at a Manhattan department store in 1996.
Trump was ordered to pay $2 million for sexual abuse and another $3 million for defaming Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine.
Trump denied the allegations and appealed the verdict on the grounds that two other women who said Trump had sexually assaulted them too should not have been allowed to testify.
The three-judge panel of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” they said.
“Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”
Carroll was awarded $83 million by another jury in a separate case she brought against Trump.
He has appealed that verdict and Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the Republican would lodge a further appeal against the $5 million damages awarded in the sexual abuse and defamation case.
“The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate,” Cheung said in a statement.
“They demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed,” he said.
Two federal cases brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith have been dismissed since he won the November 5 presidential election.
Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election but Smith dropped the cases under a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Judge Juan Merchan recently rejected a bid by the president-elect to have his conviction thrown out but has postponed sentencing indefinitely.
US and foreign leaders praise Jimmy Carter’s legacy
Joe Biden led US presidents and other world leaders in paying tribute to Jimmy Carter, who died aged 100.
“America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House on Sunday.
He added later in a televised address that Carter “lived a life measured not by words, but by his deeds.” “We’d all do well to try and be a little more like Jimmy Carter.”
President-elect Donald Trump said Americans owe
Carter “a debt of gratitude.” “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans,” he said on social media. Among former US presidents, Bill Clinton said his predecessor had “worked tirelessly for a better, fairer world.”
George W. Bush said Carter “dignified the office. And his efforts to leave behind a better world didn’t end with the presidency.”
Barack Obama hailed Carter for teaching “all of us what it means to live a life of grace, dignity, justice and service.”
Researcher in Kenya boasts ‘Africa’s largest butterfly collection’
- By the age of 5, Steve Collins started building a collection that has grown to more than 4.2 million, representing hundreds of species
NAIROBI: What began as a childhood hobby more than six decades ago has led to what might be Africa’s largest butterfly collection in a suburb of Kenya’s capital.
Steve Collins, 74, was born and raised in western Kenya. By the age of 5, he was fascinated by butterflies and started building a collection that has grown to more than 4.2 million, representing hundreds of species.
“My parents encouraged us to look for butterflies after visiting the Congo and were gifted a trapping net by some friends,” Collins said. “By the time I was 15 years old, I was already visiting other countries like Nigeria to study more about butterflies.”
During his 20-year career as an agronomist, Collins dedicated his free time to research. He established the African Butterfly Research Institute in 1997.
Now, running out of space and time, he hopes to hand it over to the next generation.
On his 1.5 acres of land, hundreds of indigenous trees and flowering bushes form a well-knit forest. Hundreds of butterflies dance from one flower to another, at times landing on Collins’ hand.
His collection is private, although it was initially open to the public when he ran it as an education center between 1998 and 2003.
Collins has 1.2 million butterflies from across Africa delicately pinned in frames and stored in rows of shelves, with another 3 million in envelopes.
“They need to be kept in dark spaces,” he said. “The form of storage also ensures the dried butterflies are not eaten by other insects, parasites and predators. We also ensure we apply insecticides once a year to keep them safe.”
Julian Bayliss, an ecologist specializing in Africa and a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University, said he has collected butterflies for Collins over two decades.
“There is a large part of that collection that is completely irreplaceable because a large part of Africa’s habitat is being destroyed,” Bayliss said.
Africa is vulnerable to climate change, with periods of prolonged drought and serious flooding destroying forests and other butterfly habitats.
Bayliss suggested digitizing the collection to make it accessible worldwide.
Whoever takes it over “needs to be an institution that is well-founded, well-funded and secure,” he said.
Scott Miller, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, met Collins almost 30 years ago. He said such collections provide critical information that could show environmental changes over 60 years.
“These physical specimens, you can actually keep going back to them to get new layers of information as you learn more or you get a different technology or you get different questions,” he said.
Collins is concerned that soon he will no longer be able to sustain his research. He said his most prized butterfly costs $8,000 — which he keeps from sight, concerned about possible theft — and hopes to sell the collection to an individual or research institution.
The costs of running his institute are high. An annual budget posted in 2009 on the Lepidopterists’ Society of Africa website was $200,000.
Collins estimates that the specimens and other assets are worth $8 million.
“This has been my hobby for decades, and I can’t put a price on what I have done so far. I’m currently seeking to ensure the species are in safe hands when I’m out of this world,” he said.
India launches its first space docking mission
- The mission lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s PSLV rocket
- The mission is seen as pivotal for future space endeavours, including satellite servicing and India’s planned space station
BENGALURU: India launched its first space docking mission on Monday, on an Indian-made rocket, in an attempt to become the fourth country to achieve the advanced technological feat.
The mission, called Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX), lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Andhra Pradesh state at 1630 GMT aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) “workhorse” PSLV rocket. After around 15 minutes, the mission director called the launch successful after the spacecraft reached an altitude of around 470 km.
The mission is seen as pivotal for future space endeavours, including satellite servicing and the operation of the country’s planned space station.
In-space docking technology is crucial when multiple rocket launches are required to achieve shared mission objectives.
The Indian mission involves deploying two small spacecraft, each weighing about 220 kilograms, into a 470-km circular orbit. It will also demonstrate the transfer of electric power between the docked spacecraft, a capability vital for applications such as in-space robotics, composite spacecraft control and payload operations following undocking.
Each satellite carries advanced payloads, including an imaging system and a radiation-monitoring device designed to measure electron and proton radiation levels in space, providing critical data for future human spaceflight missions.
ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said the actual testing of the docking technology could take place in about a week’s time and indicated a nominal date of around Jan. 7.
“The rocket has placed the satellites in the right orbit,” he said. A successful demonstration would place India alongside the United States, Russia and China as the only countries to have developed and tested this capability. In a first for India, the rocket and the satellites were integrated and tested at a private company called Ananth Technologies, rather than at a government body.
“Display of this technology is not just about being able to join a rare group of countries who own it, it also opens up the market for ISRO to be the launch partner for various global missions that need docking facilities or assembly in space,” said astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhary of Ashoka University.
The fourth stage of the PSLV, which usually turns into space debris, has been converted into an active un-crewed space laboratory. The last stage of the rocket has been repurposed to become an orbital laboratory and will be used for various experiments.
“The PSLV Orbital Experiment Module (POEM) is a practical solution deployed by ISRO that allows Indian start-ups, academic institutions, and research organizations to test their space technologies without the need to launch entire satellites. By making this platform accessible, we are reducing entry barriers and enabling a wider range of entities to contribute to the space sector,” said Pawan Goenka, chairman of India’s space regulatory body.
