PORT-AU-PRINCE Jul 31,2021: Haitian police on Friday outlined fresh accusations against a former Supreme Court judge over her links to the assassination of President Jovenel Moise earlier this month, saying she had met with some Colombian mercenaries accused of killing him.
The assassination of Moise has plunged the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation deeper into chaos, and launched an international manhunt for mercenaries and the murder masterminds across the Americas.
Haitian police had earlier this week issued an arrest warrant for Wendelle Coq-Thelot, a former Supreme Court judge who was ousted with two other judges earlier in February when Moise alleged a coup was being planned against him.
Coq-Thelot’s whereabouts are unknown and she could not be reached for comment.
Colombian mercenaries and Haitian-Americans arrested in the wake of Moise’s murder said they had met Coq-Thelot, according to Inspector General Marie Michelle Verrier, the spokesperson for the National Police of Haiti.
Jul 31,2021:The United States imposed sanctions on the Cuban police force and two of its leaders on Friday in response to the Havana government’s crackdown on protesters, and President Joe Biden promised Cuban-American leaders more actions were coming.
The US Treasury Department said the sanctions, which appeared to be largely symbolic, were a reaction to “actions to suppress peaceful, pro-democratic protests in Cuba that began on July 11.”
Targets of the sanctions are two Cuban police force leaders, as well as the Cuban interior ministry’s national police force, the department said.
“There will be more, unless there’s some drastic change in Cuba, which I don’t anticipate,” Biden said during a meeting with Cuban-American leaders at the White House.
His meeting came as the politically important community calls for more support for protests in Cuba that represent the biggest populist outpouring against the government on the Communist-run island in decades.
“The United States is taking concerted action to bolster the cause of the Cuban people,” said Biden.
Biden said he had asked the Treasury and State departments to report back in a month on how to allow remittance payments from Americans to Cubans without the Cuban government profiting.
In addition, Biden has been working on a plan to try to provide wireless communications to Cubans and augment US embassy staff in Cuba, a senior administration official said.
The protests erupted this month amid Cuba’s worst economic crisis since the fall of its old Soviet Union ally and a record surge in coronavirus infections.
Thousands took to the streets, angry over shortages of basic goods, curbs on civil liberties, and the authorities’ handling of the pandemic.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has blamed the unrest on the United States, which in recent years has tightened its decades-old trade embargo on the island.
He has said many protesters were sincere but manipulated by US-orchestrated social media campaigns.
New Delhi, Jul 30,20,2021: India on Thursday categorically rejected any reference to Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan and China, saying that the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh are an integral and inalienable part of the country, and also called upon the two countries to cease actions on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that change the status quo of areas illegally occupied by Pakistan.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, in his media briefing, referring to a joint statement issued by Pakistan and China on July 24, said: “As in the past, India categorically rejects any reference to Jammu and Kashmir. The Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir and the Union Territory of Ladakh has been and will remain an integral and inalienable part of India.”
“The Joint Press release has also made a reference to the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). We have consistently conveyed to both China and Pakistan that the so-called CPEC is in India’s territory that has been illegally occupied by Pakistan, and that we resolutely oppose any attempts by other countries to change the status quo in areas illegally occupied by Pakistan as also to Pakistan bringing up any material change in Indian territories under its illegal occupation. We call upon parties concerned to cease such actions,” he said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Saturday held talks in the Chinese city of Chengdu, after which the two sides issued a joint statement, which had references to Jammu and Kashmir as “a dispute left over from history”.
Qureshi, whose delegation included ISI Director General Lt Gen Faiz Hamid, had raised the Kashmir issue during his talks with Wang.
“Shared similar outlook for a peaceful, stable & prosperous South Asia & appreciate China’s unyielding support for Kashmir, reiterating dispute should be resolved through the UN Charter, relevant Security Council resolutions & bilateral agreements, opposing unilateral action,” Qureshi had tweeted.
The joint statement said that both sides agreed on the need to settle disputes and issues in the region through dialogue on the basis of equality and mutual respect.
“The Pakistan side briefed the Chinese side on the deteriorating situation in Jammu & Kashmir, including its concerns, position and current urgent issues,” the joint statement said.
“The Chinese side reiterated that the Kashmir issue is a dispute left over from history between India and Pakistan, which is an objective fact, and that the dispute should be resolved peacefully and properly through the UN Charter, relevant Security Council resolutions and bilateral agreements. China opposes any unilateral actions that complicate the situation,” the joint statement released by Pakistan’s Foreign Office said.
Qureshi also termed the China Pakistan Economic Corridor as “a clear manifestation of our intentions to upgrade our bilateral and strategic relationship”.
In a tweet, Qureshi said: “CPEC has entered a new phase of development and reviewed progress including the New Gwadar Airport, 300 MW power plant, desalination plant and Gwadar Free Zone. We look forward to the 10th JCC meeting at earliest.”
India has repeatedly registered its protests over CPEC, the flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), saying it is in violation of its territorial sovereignty as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) – Indian Territory illegally occupied by Pakistan.
The $65 billion CPEC infrastructure project connects China’s Xinjiang province with Gwadar port in Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Jul 29,2021: Archaeologists in Morocco have announced the discovery of North Africa’s oldest Stone Age hand-axe manufacturing site, dating back 1.3 million years, an international team reported on Wednesday.
The find pushes back by hundreds of thousands of years the start date in North Africa of the Acheulian stone tool industry associated with a key human ancestor, Homo erectus, researchers on the team told journalists in Rabat.
It was made during excavations at a quarry on the outskirts of the country’s economic capital Casablanca.
This “major discovery … contributes to enriching the debate on the emergence of the Acheulian in Africa”, said Abderrahim Mohib, co-director of the Franco-Moroccan Prehistory of Casablanca programme.
Before the find, the presence in Morocco of the Acheulian stone tool industry was thought to date back 700,000 years.
New finds at the Thomas Quarry I site, first made famous in 1969 when a human half mandible was discovered in a cave, mean the Acheulian there is almost twice as old.
The 17-strong team behind the discovery comprised Moroccan, French and Italian researchers, and their finding is based on the study of stone tools extracted from the site.
Moroccan archaeologist Abdelouahed Ben Ncer called the news a “chronological rebound”.
He said the beginning of the Acheulian in Morocco is now close to the South and East African start dates of 1.6 million and 1.8 million years ago respectively.
Earlier humans had made do with more primitive pebble tools, known as Oldowan after their East African type site.
‘Richest Acheulian assemblages’
Research at the Casablanca site has been carried out for decades, and has “delivered one of the richest Acheulian assemblages in Africa”, Mohib said.
“It is very important because we are talking about prehistoric time, a complex period for which little data exists.”
Mohib said the study also made it possible to attest to “the oldest presence in Morocco of humans” who were “variants of Homo erectus”.
In 2017, the discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturned evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.
The Moroccan fossils were much older than some with similar facial characteristics excavated from Omo Kibish in Ethiopia, dating back about 195,000 years.
Jul 29,2021:Analysts at the Federation of American Scientists say China is building a second field of silos for launching nuclear missiles in a development that could constitute “the most significant expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal ever”.
The United States-based researchers made the discovery after analysing commercial satellite images, and said on Monday that the field – located near the city of Hami in Xinjiang province – may eventually include about 110 silos.
The new field is about 380km (236 miles) from a base near the city of Yumen in neighbouring Gansu province, where a separate group of researchers earlier this month found construction under way on 120 missile silos.
Altogether, the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force now appears to have 250 silos under construction at Hami, Yumen, as well as at a training ground near the city of Jilantai in Inner Mongolia, wrote the FAS’s Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen.
The number marks a significant increase, they said, given that China has for decades operated only 20 silos for its liquid fuel Df-5 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM).
However, they stressed that it was unclear how China would operate the new silos, whether it would load all of them with missiles or use a portion as empty decoys. They also noted it was not known how many warheads each missile would carry.
Jul 28,2021: A top-level Taliban delegation is in China for talks with Beijing officials, spokesman Mohammad Naeem said, as the insurgents continue a sweeping offensive across Afghanistan — including areas along their shared border.
The delegation, led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, met with the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi for talks on the peace process and security issues. The talks come amid growing concerns in Beijing over the activities of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that seeks to establish a Uyghur state.
”Politics, economy and issues related to the security of both countries and the current situation of Afghanistan and the peace process were discussed in the meetings,” Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Naeem tweeted.
Baradar, who heads the Taliban’s political office in Qatar and has been the lead negotiator with the US, met Wang in the northern city of Tianjin, the South China Morning Post reported citing sources familiar with the arrangements.
“The Islamic Emirate assured China that Afghanistan’s soil would not be used against any country’s security . They (China) promised not to interfere in Afghanistan’s affairs, but instead help to solve problem s and bring peace,” Naeem said.
Security in Afghanistan, with which China shares a border, has been deteriorating fast as the United States withdraws its troops by September. The Taliban has launched a flurry of offensives, taking districts and border crossings around the country while peace talks in Qatar’s capital have not made substantive progress.
This is for the first time that a senior Taliban leader has visited China since the group launched a massive offensive to capture territory across Afghanistan. China had hosted a Taliban delegation in 2019 that met Deng Xijun, then the special envoy for Afghanistan.
The report added that Chinese officials had in the past participated in talks with the Taliban along with representatives from Afghanistan, the US and Pakistan but these had not resulted in any forward movement in efforts to find a political settlement.
Melbourne [Australia], July 28,2021: The global banking sector is clawing its way back to normalcy, according to a new report by S&P Global Ratings.
The strong support by authorities for households and corporates over the course of Covid-19 has clearly helped banks, it said.
Lenders were also well positioned going into the pandemic after banks bolstered their capital, provisioning, funding and liquidity buffers in the wake of the global financial crisis.
S&P Global Ratings expects normalisation to be the dominant theme of next 12 months as rebounding economies, vaccinations and state measures help banks bounce back much more quickly than was conceivable in the dark days of 2020.
“We see less downside risk for banks as economies rebound, vaccinations kick in and banks feel the stabilising effects of state intervention,” said S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Gavin Gunning.
“With no vaccine in October 2020, we believed at the time that 2021 could be a very difficult year for banks. State intervention on behalf of corporates and households — including significant fiscal and monetary policy support — is working and banks have benefited,” said Gunning.
S&P’s net negative outlook for the global banking sector improved to 1 per cent in June from 31 per cent in October 2020. As at June 25, about 13 per cent of bank outlooks were negative.
This is significantly lower than October 2020 when about one-third of rating outlooks on banks were negative.
S&P said its base case is that the global banking sector will continue to slowly stabilise as the economic rebound gains momentum and as support is gradually withdrawn.
Should a re-intensification of risks occur, this will require more support from public authorities for the real economy.
For 11 of the top 20 banking jurisdictions, S&P estimates that a return to pre-Covid-19 levels of financial strength will not occur until 2023 or beyond. For the other nine, it estimates that recovery may occur by year-end 2022.