A long-negotiated investment agreement between EU and China was more of an “intention” than a deal and it could be a long time before it became a reality, an EU commissioner said on Thursday.
“I will be very honest with you, this deal was not exactly a deal,” Thierry Breton, France’s representative to the EU executive told the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
“At the end of the day… it was an intention… not more, not less,” said the former French finance minister, who is the EU’s industry commissioner.
“So I think that the time when the intention will transform into reality may be pretty long,” he added.
He also noted that the deal, sealed to the surprise of many during the last hours of Germany’s EU presidency in December, came during an “interim time in the US” between the Trump and Biden presidencies.
Breton spoke after the EU commission admitted that it was forced to suspend efforts to ratify the pact after a volley of tit-for-tat sanctions between Beijing and Brussels.
The dispute escalated suddenly in March when the EU imposed sanctions on four party and Xinjiang regional officials because of their actions against the Uyghur Muslim minority.
Beijing swiftly hit back with punitive measures on European politicians and academics, including key MEPs who would need to back the pact.
The EU commission handles trade policy for the bloc’s 27 member states and the pact with China was seven years in the making.
The Bank of England BoE on Thursday said “developments in global GDP growth have been a little stronger than anticipated, and the substantial new US fiscal stimulus package should provide significant additional support to the outlook”.
But it cautioned that “the outlook for the economy, and particularly the relative movement in demand and supply during the recovery from the pandemic, remains unusually uncertain”.
Alongside the BoE support, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government has spent £352 billion in emergency measures since the outbreak of Covid-19.
A large part has gone on a jobs furlough scheme that has paid the bulk of private sector wages for millions of workers across the UK.
The BoE on Thursday said it expected unemployment to peak at around 5.5 percent this year, up from the current official level of 4.9 percent.
Annual inflation will meanwhile reach around 2.5 percent, above the central bank’s 2.0-percent target, before falling back down.
Investors are concerned that the reopening of economies and huge government stimulus programmes worldwide will hike inflation, risking higher interest rates down the line.
The Bank of England has created £450 billion ($626 billion, 522 billion Euros) under its quantitative easing stimulus programme since March last year, when Covid-19 prompted Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown.
FORMER spokesman of the Nigerian Army Sani Usman has said that the Federal Government should do more than just press statements if there is any attempt to take over power undemocratically.
He said this in an interview on Channels TV Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, stressing that the military were at the forefront of affairs this time due to insecurity plaguing the country.
He said the concerns from the Federal Government were not surprising as the interest in military activities had become higher due to closeness of soldiers to the people in recent times.
He stated that the convergence of the key leadership units on national issues was bound to bring up conspiracy theories and that the attempt by the military to dissipate such assumption was in order.
He, however, urged the Federal Government to take more definite steps if there were genuine fears of unconstitutional actions being taken against the Nigerian democracy
Two police officers were killed on Wednesday during an attack on Obosi Police station, Idemili North local government area of Anambra State.
They also razed the station and two operational vehicles.
Police spokesperson in the state, Ikenga Tochukwu, confirmed that the officers died during a gun duel with the attackers.
“During the attack, two police operatives paid the supreme price. The command quickly a responding team and the hoodlums in a bid to escape set part of police building on fire and two operational vehicles,” Tochukwu said in the statement.
He added that the Commissioner of Police in the state, Chris Owolabi has detailed the Police Crack Team led by the Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations to identify and apprehend the yet-to-be-identified gunmen.
He added that The CrackTeam had visited the scene and conduct an on-the-spot assessment of the incidence.
An investigation has commenced in identifying the perpetrators of the crime.
Gunmen on Wednesday night kidnapped an unknown number of students of Abia State University, Uturu.
It was also gathered that the hoodlums whisked the students into the forest shortly after they ambushed them while journeying on a bus along Okigwe-Uturu Road.
The Commissioner for Information in the State, John Kalu, confirmed the development in a statement on Thursday, saying that two of the students escaped from the clutches of the hoodlums while others were still being held hostage by the criminals.
The statement read, “Abia State Government is currently monitoring an incident that happened in Okigwe, Imo State, yesterday which led to the suspected abduction of yet to be determined number of students of the Abia State University, Uturu, who apparently ran into a yet to be identified gang of hoodlums operating along the Okigwe-Uturu Road.
From Borno to Yobe, Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Kaduna, and now Abia, Nigeria has become a hotbed of kidnappers of late as the criminals target schools.
Aside the Afaka abduction, no fewer than 23 students and a member of staff of Greenfield University, Kaduna were also abducted from the school on April 20, 2021. Few days later, five of the students were killed by the bandits.
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has recently come under fire over the escalating kidnappings and killings in the country, with many losing confidence in the ability of Buhari, a retired military commander, who won the 2015 and 2019 general elections with the promise of ending the insecurity in the country.
The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) on Wednesday said inadequate satellite and other facilities affect monitoring of bandits and other criminal elements operating in the country.
The newly appointed Director-General of the Agency, Halilu Shaba disclosed this to journalists in Abuja after an interactive meeting with staff of the agency in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Shaba said the bandits have become sophisticated in their operations and waves received by the agency from remote areas shows the bandits no longer use Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) phones, but walkie-talkie.
“The Satellite is not static where the insurgency is taking place. That is why one satellite is not adequate. What Nigeria has there are some two satellites doing two different things.
“We have a High-Resolution imaging satellite and Medium Resolution imaging satellite. The activities of the bandits could be when the satellite was away from Nigerian borders, so that is why we are advocating for more satellites for Nigeria,” he said.
Shaba, therefore, called for collaboration between the agency and security agencies in the country in the area of information sharing, especially when planning to launch attacks on the criminal elements.
A tiara passed down through generations of Italy’s royal family will be among the highlights at a Sotheby’s auction of jewels in Geneva next week.
Dating to the second half of the 19th century, the tiara was a wedding gift to Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo upon her marriage in 1867 to Amadeo I of Savoy, later king of Spain.
The tiara features graduated scroll motifs set with diamonds and natural pearls and is on sale with an estimate price of $1 million to $1.5 million.
“It’s a true, beautiful and historic piece which has remained in the House of Savoy for over 150 years,” said Benoit Repellin, head of magnificent jewels sales at Sotheby’s.
The May 11 sale also features large diamonds and coloured gemstones, including a 1930s sapphire and diamond brooch featuring the largest Kashmir sapphire ever to appear at auction – a 55.19-carat oval gem – alongside a Kashmir sapphire weighing 25.97 carats.
Estimated to fetch $2 million to $3 million, it belonged to an heiress of the Guinness brewery fortune, said Olivier Wagner, senior director of the jewellery department at Sotheby’s.
Kashmir sapphires are sought after as they were discovered at the end of the 19th century and the mines were only exploited over 20 years, he said.
“The only way to find them is to buy them at auction,” he said.
One of the regions hit hardest in the early days of the pandemic the state of New York is going to lift most of its capacity restrictions on businesses including shops, gyms and restaurants starting May 19th.
The neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut are doing the same.
The governors of the three states made the announcement on Monday, citing a steady decline in new cases of the coronavirus and in hospitalizations.
The New York City subway will also resume its 24-hour service starting May 17th, having suspended it late at night for a year.
These three states will, however, continue to recommend that people keep a distance from each other of six feet, which is about two meters.
Rebels who launched an offensive in northern Chad, sparking clashes that claimed the life of veteran president Idriss Deby Itno, are in flight, the country’s new defence minister said on Thursday.
“The security forces are thoroughly sweeping the operational area. Most of the prisoners are in the hands of the gendarmerie (police) and are being well-treated. The enemy is fleeing,” Defence Minister Brahim Daoud Yaya told a news conference.
“We are never going to dialogue with terrorists.”
He was speaking after the first meeting of a transitional government appointed by a 14-member military junta, the Transitional Military Council (TMC), that took office after Deby’s death on April 19.
Opposition supporters, meanwhile, called for fresh anti-junta protests on Saturday.
Demonstrations on April 29 that were violently repressed by the authorities claimed six lives, according to the authorities, and nine according to a local grass-roots organisation, while more than 600 people were arrested.
The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), a large armed group with a rear base in Libya, mounted an offensive on April 11 as the country was to hold presidential elections.
Deby, a former general who had been in power for 30 years, led the fighting against the insurgents.
According to the authorities, he died from combat injuries in the Kanem desert region, about 300 kilometres (200 miles) north of the capital N’Djamena, close to the border with Niger.
“Libya is the terrorists’ stronghold,” the minister said.
He added, however: “I cannot accuse Libya of supporting the terrorists, as there is no state in Libya.”
Deby’s death occurred on the same day that he was declared victor in the presidential results and that the army claimed to have killed 300 FACT rebels, according to official announcements.
Another 246 rebels have been captured and handed over to the judicial authorities, according to the authorities.
Fighting has been continuing in the area of Nokou, in the administrative region of North Kanem.
Last week, a Chadian military helicopter crashed there after what the army said was a breakdown, while FACT said it had downed the aircraft.
A junta took power immediately after Deby’s shock death, headed by his 37-year-old son Mahamat, a four-star general, and parliament was suspended.
The military rulers have vowed to hold “free and democratic” elections following an 18-month transition period.
On Sunday, the junta unveiled a 40-member transitional government, the key posts of which have gone to members of the former president’s MPS party.
According to a report on Thursday’s first ministerial meeting, a copy of which was seen by AFP, Deby “instructed the government to urgently strengthen communal living, which has been seriously tested, to consolidate peace, ensure security and guarantee security.”
He also called for the holding of an “inclusive national dialogue.”
One of Africa’s longest-surviving rebel groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorised parts of central Africa for 35 years.
Its leaders are violent pariahs and fugitives from international justice, who were once hunted by US special forces and African armies.
Founder Joseph Kony remains on the run but other key commanders have died or turned themselves in, among them Dominic Ongwen who was sentenced to 25 years in jail on Thursday for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The LRA and Museveni –
The LRA began as a rebellion against the takeover of Uganda by rebel leader Yoweri Museveni in 1986. This followed in a tradition of armed movements led by spiritual leaders among the northern Acholi people.
Kony, a Catholic altar boy, showed an early penchant for mystical pronouncements and horrific brutality.
He claimed he would liberate Uganda from Museveni and establish a state ruled according to his own version of the 10 commandments.
He later added an 11th, banning the riding of bicycles with offenders punished with amputation.
When the Acholi failed to embrace his rebellion Kony turned on them, attacking civilians, abducting women and children and massacring entire villages.
The LRA became notorious for its abductions, with tens of thousands kidnapped over the years.
The LRA and the ICC –
In 2005 the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against five top LRA leaders, including Kony and Ongwen, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The pressure of ICC attention contributed to Kony’s turning up to peace talks the following year, the first time he had appeared in public in years. However, the talks collapsed and Kony took his rebels back to the bush.
Three of the five ICC indictees have since died. Ongwen surrendered in January 2015.
The 2005 warrants were the first issued by the court and came after Uganda asked the ICC to investigate the LRA case. In 2016, Ongwen’s trial became the first involving the LRA.
The LRA and the US –
A concerted campaign by activists in the US led former president Barack Obama to sign a law in 2010 that allowed the deployment of around 100 special forces to work with regional armies to hunt down Kony.
One of the groups, Invisible Children, went on to produce a video two years later called “Kony 2012” that went viral with 100 million views in a matter of days, raising awareness of the rebel group’s activities and its fugitive leader.
The video’s unexpected success — and the vocal criticism that it also triggered — resulted in the very public, naked, ranting breakdown of the group’s founder and frontman Jason Russell.
That, plus the failure of their hashtags to stop Kony, meant the American clicktivists largely lost interest while Kony and the LRA continued their depredations.
In 2017, the US military announced it was wrapping up the mission against the LRA, saying its operations had “been reduced to irrelevance”.
The same year the Ugandan army began withdrawing its troops from the Central African Republic.
The LRA today –
The rebels are not what they were. Estimated to number in the low hundreds, LRA groups are dispersed across parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Sudan.
The US and the African Union have both designated the LRA as a terrorist group and the US has labelled Kony a “global terrorist” yet the LRA threat is relatively limited and local.
The LRA Crisis Tracker organisation says the group carried out 42 attacks in the past year, leaving 31 dead and 192 abducted, mainly in the remote DRC-CAR-South Sudan border areas.
This represents a 48 percent decline in attacks compared to the previous year.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
