NOUMEA: Separatists in French Pacific territory New Caledonia pressed Paris Monday to drop a planned voting reform that triggered weeks of deadly unrest.
The Socialist Kanak National Liberation Front (FLNKS) — named for the indigenous people who fear being marginalized by the changes — said President Emmanuel Macron should “be clear in his words by stating clearly he will... abandon the constitutional reform,” which has yet to be approved by both houses of parliament.
“Such an announcement would permit... the calming of the current tensions so as to resume discussions on the future of New Caledonia,” the FLNKS’ political committee told Macron in a letter seen by AFP.
The government plans to open up the archipelago’s electoral roll — frozen since 1998 — to more recent arrivals who have lived there for at least 10 years.
Kanaks fear the change will crush their ambitions for independence by leaving them in a permanent minority in the territory of 270,000 people.
Anger over the plans spilled into two weeks of riots and erection of barricades that cut off many neighborhoods and blocked major roads.
Clashes cost the lives of seven people and left hundreds more injured, as well as causing around one billion euros ($1.1 billion) in damage.
Macron said during a brief visit to New Caledonia on May 23 that he did not want to “pass the reform by force” — while vowing he would not “turn back.”
“On the ground, these remarks regrettably continue not to be understood,” the FLNKS said.
“This incomprehension poses a real difficulty and prevents our activists from hearing the call for calm and easing tensions,” it added.
French authorities insist capital Noumea is back under their control, although barricades endure and pro-independence demonstrators are determined to stay in the streets.
Noumea’s international airport remains closed, while an overnight curfew is in force across New Caledonia until at least June 10.
New Caledonia separatists urge Paris to drop voting reform
https://arab.news/68932
New Caledonia separatists urge Paris to drop voting reform
- Kanaks fear their ambitions for independence will be crushed by leaving them in a permanent minority in the territory of 270,000 people
Trump, Biden gird for historic US presidential debate
ATLANTA: Joe Biden and Donald Trump made final preparations Wednesday for the biggest moment so far in the US election — the first of two high-stakes debates that could upend the race.
Thursday’s televised showdown will raise the campaigning to boiling point, with tens of millions expected to tune in and both camps escalating their increasingly personal attacks.
“I think I have been preparing for it for my whole life... We’ll do very well,” Trump told right-wing network Newsmax in an interview on his debate preparation.
Trump enjoys a slight advantage in the all-important swing states but the overall polling looks extremely close in an election likely to be decided by a few photo finishes in a handful of battlegrounds.
The latest Quinnipiac University poll conducted Sunday shows Trump edging ahead of Biden nationally, 49 percent to 45 percent.
The rivals both step onstage for the 90-minute clash, hosted by CNN in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia, seeking to allay fears about serious political liabilities.
Biden, 81, faces the most concern about his mental sharpness, with voters much more likely to bring up his age than Trump’s, despite the Republican being just three years younger.
Ahead of the first ever debate between two candidates who have already served in the Oval Office, both Trump and Biden have had missteps that have raised questions over their age, occasionally stumbling over words or appearing muddled.
Trump is also engulfed in controversy over his inflammatory rhetoric and a glut of criminal cases he faces, as well as fears that he would weaponize the presidency to settle personal scores.
Biden has spent the week off the radar at the mountainside retreat of Camp David near Washington, fine-tuning his attack lines in a series of mock debates under real TV studio lighting.
Trump’s preparation has been more relaxed, eschewing dress rehearsals in favor of informal policy roundtables and workshopping debate strategy with rally crowds.
Aides have encouraged him to focus on his perceived strength on the economy and crime, while Biden will seek to paint Trump as unhinged and unfit for office.
“Come November, Georgians will head to the polls remembering that President Biden looks out for them, while white-collar crook Donald Trump will only look out for himself,” said Democratic National Committee spokesperson Jackie Bush.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly characterized Biden as feeble and incompetent, but changed tack in recent days following warnings that setting low expectations for the Democratic president would only help him.
“We know that Joe Biden, that after taking an entire week off, will be ready for this,” senior Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said in a briefing to reporters.
Trump and his team have also been pushing the baseless theory that Biden will be hyped up on performance-enhancing drugs and have made repeated insinuations of bias from CNN.
Miller said Trump would emerge as the clear choice if “allowed” to set out his vision for America “without the blatant interference of CNN or the two moderators” of the debate.
One of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities is border security, with Trump promising to combat an influx of undocumented migrants from Mexico with mass deportations and repeatedly bringing up killings by migrants.
The Biden administration said Wednesday there has been a 40 percent drop in illegal crossings from Mexico since the president’s new executive action last month cracking down on the border.
Two-thirds of registered voters said in a new YouGov poll they would probably or definitely watch the debate, with Biden and Trump supporters equally likely to tune in.
More Americans expect a Trump debate win than a Biden victory — 40 percent to 30 percent — but just one in 10 thought it even somewhat likely that the debate would change their vote.
Former lawmaker Adam Kinzinger joined a small group of fellow Republican Trump critics at the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta to rally support for Biden ahead of the debate.
“If you had told me, Adam Kinzinger of three years ago, that ‘you’re going to be endorsing a Democrat for president in three years,’ I probably wouldn’t have believed you,” he said.
“But I’ve got to tell you the stakes of the moment are way too high.”
Coup attempt underway in Bolivia as president urges people to mobilize against it
LA PAZ, Bolivia: Armored vehicles rammed into the doors of Bolivia’s government palace Wednesday as President Luis Arce said the country faced an attempted coup, insisted he stands firm and urged people to mobilize.
In a video of Arce surrounded by ministers in the palace, he said: “The country is facing an attempted coup d’état. Here we are, firm in Casa Grande, to confront any coup attempt. We need the Bolivian people to organize.”
Arce confronted the general commander of the Army, Juan José Zúñiga, in the palace hallway, as shown on video on Bolivian television. “I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination,” Arce said.
Before entering the government building, Zúñiga told journalists in the plaza: “Surely soon there will be a new Cabinet of ministers; our country, our state cannot go on like this.” Zúñiga said that “for now” he recognizes Arce as commander in chief.
In a message on his X account, Arce called for “democracy to be respected.” It came as Bolivian television showed two tanks and a number of men in military uniform in front of the government palace.
“We cannot allow, once again, coup attempts to take the lives of Bolivians,” he said from inside the palace, surrounded by government officials, in a video message sent to news outlets.
Former President Evo Morales, also in a message on X, denounced the movement of the military in the Murillo square outside the palace, calling it a coup “in the making.”
María Nela Prada, minister of the presidency and a top Bolivian official, called it an “attempted coup d’etat.”
“The people are on alert to defend democracy,” she said to local television station Red Uno.
The incident was met with a wave of outrage by other regional leaders, including the Organization of American States; Gabriel Boric, the president of neighboring Chile; Honduras’s leader, and former Bolivian leaders.
Bolivia, a country of 12 million people, has seen intensifying protests in recent months over the economy’s precipitous decline from one of the continent’s fastest-growing two decades ago to one of its most crisis-stricken.
The country also has seen a high-profile rift at the highest levels of the governing party. Arce and his one-time ally, leftist icon and former President Morales, have been battling for the future of Bolivia’s splintering Movement for Socialism, known by its Spanish acronym MAS, ahead of elections in 2025.
British election candidate says he would ‘slaughter’ migrants arriving in UK on small boats
- Leslie Lilley will stand for Reform UK at the general election next month in the constituency of Southend East and Rochford, currently a Conservative seat
LONDON: A candidate standing for the right-wing political party Reform UK in the British general election next month said he would “slaughter” migrants who arrive in the country on small boats and “have their family taken out,” The Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.
It said Leslie Lilley, who is standing in the constituency of Southend East and Rochford, made the threats four years ago on the Facebook account he is now using to run his election campaign. In reaction to reports of a small boat arriving in Dover in June 2020 he said: “I hope I’m near one of these scumbags one day I won’t run away I’ll slaughter them then have their family taken out.”
During the same month, the 70-year-old also complained about “more scum entering the UK” and said: “I hope your family get robbed, beaten or attacked.”
Some predictions suggest that Lilley could win about 20 percent of the vote in the constituency of Southend East and Rochford, which is currently held by the Conservative Party but is viewed as a key target for Labour in the election on July 4.
Reform UK, formerly known as the Brexit Party, is a right-wing, populist political party founded in 2018 and led by Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party.
US jails Honduran ex-president for 45 years on drug charges
- Judge Kevin Castel said Hernandez provided police and military support and helped to send 400 tons of drugs — worth $10 billion at market prices — to the US
- The sentence, which also included an $8 million fine, was less than the life imprisonment that prosecutors had sought
NEW YORK: A court in New York on Wednesday sentenced former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez to 45 years in prison after he was convicted of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States.
Anti-Hernandez protesters gathered outside the Manhattan courthouse ahead of sentencing brandishing placards decrying the former head of state’s crimes with one declaring “Narco government — makes the people emigrate.”
“The role of Mr.Hernandez was to use his political power as president of Congress and president of Honduras to limit the risks of drug traffickers in exchange of money,” said Judge Kevin Castel.
He said Hernandez provided police and military support and helped to send 400 tons of drugs — worth $10 billion at market prices — to the United States.
The sentence, which also included an $8 million fine, was less than the life imprisonment that prosecutors had sought — although Hernandez’s age, 55, means he may die behind bars.
“He’s going to pursue every single possible legal remedy that he can pursue,” Hernandez’s lawyer Renato Stabile told reporters outside court.
Hernandez, who US federal prosecutors said turned his Central American country into a “narco-state” during his presidency from 2014 to 2022, has previously indicated through his legal team he would appeal his conviction.
He was convicted in March of having facilitated the smuggling of hundreds of tons of cocaine — mainly from Colombia and Venezuela — to the United States via Honduras since 2004, starting long before his presidency.
Hernandez used the drug money to enrich himself and finance his political campaign, and commit electoral fraud in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections, prosecutors said.
He had presented himself as a champion of the war on drugs and was initially seen by Washington as an ally in the fight.
In 2017, the United States was one of the first countries to recognize his re-election, while the opposition denounced fraud against a backdrop of violent protests that left some 30 people dead.
He was extradited to the United States in 2022 using a law he had himself helped to pass as Congress president under pressure from Washington, accused of aiding drug smugglers in return for millions of dollars in bribes.
The fall of Hernandez, who is known in his country as “JOH,” was abrupt.
No sooner had he handed over power to the new left-wing president Xiomara Castro, the outgoing leader was shackled and paraded in front of journalists.
Hernandez follows in the footsteps of other former Latin American heads of state convicted in the United States, including Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1992 and Guatemala’s Alfonso Portillo in 2014.
The short, athletic leader was known for his military haircut, having served as an officer before training as a lawyer, completing a masters degree in New York in 1995.
His legal woes began in earnest in 2018 when his brother, Juan Antonio Hernandez, was arrested in Miami and sentenced in March 2021 to life imprisonment for “large-scale” drug trafficking.
After his arrest in Honduras in February 2022, Hernandez said he was a victim of “revenge” by the drug lords, many of whom testified against him in New York.
UK government handed $1.5m rail contract to Canadian company that bribed Libyan dictator’s son
- The Conservative administration chose Montreal-based AtkinsRealis to provide technical and commercial advice to the Department of Transport
- The firm previously admitted bribing the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi with millions of dollars between 2001 and 2011 to win contracts
LONDON: A Canadian company that pleaded guilty to bribing late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s son to win contracts in the North African nation was granted a £1.2 million ($1.5 million) contract by the UK’s Conservative government, The Independent newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Department for Transport documents reveal that AtkinsRealis, a company formerly known as SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. that is based in Montreal, successfully bid for a contract to provide specialist technical and commercial advice to support the department’s oversight of rail fares, ticketing and retailing policy.
The business previously pleaded guilty to bribing dictator’s son Saadi Qaddafi with millions of dollars between 2001 and 2011 to win contracts in the North African nation, the Independent said.
AtkinsRealis won the contract in September 2023 and it is set to run until December 2025. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the company relating to the contract.
“The events in question occurred before 2012,” a spokesperson for AtkinsRealis’ told the Independent. “The company has transformed culturally, operationally and in its governance over the last decade, with a new leadership team and a robust and transparent integrity and compliance program recognized and independently verified by the Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in ethical business practices.”
The newspaper said that prior to the company’s rebranding, it was linked with historic allegations of bribery and corruption in several countries.
After winning a government contract in India in 1995 to refurbish a hydroelectric power station, it faced accusations of bribery and financial fraud. Several Indian officials were sacked following an official investigation.
More recently, four former employees of SNC-Lavalin who faced corruption allegations over their role in the construction the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh were acquitted by a Canadian Court.
The company pleaded guilty to paying $48 million in bribes to public officials in Libya to win contracts while Muammar Qaddafi was in power. In 2014, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charged two former employees of bribing Libyan officials to secure deals over the course of a decade. In 2019, Canadian prosecutors said payments were directed to Saadi Qaddafi in return for him using his influence to secure construction contracts.
In response to questions about the awarding of the rail contract to AtkinsRealis, the Department for Transport told The Independent it is committed to delivering value for money for taxpayers and contracts are awarded through transparent and fair processes. The Conservative Party refused to comment.
AtkinsRealis said the company has been providing technical advice on rail fares and ticketing to the Department for Transport since 2020.
“This specialist advice has been used to support the development of fares strategies for the UK passenger rail network, including the expansion of ‘pay as you go’ ticketing, fares simplification and reform, and ticketing and retail strategies,” the spokesperson added.
