Dozens of gunmen attacked two villages in Katsina state, north-western Nigeria and killed 14 villagers, a politician and local police say.
The politician, who represents the area in the state's parliament, Abdul Jalal Haruna Runka, told the BBC the attackers on motorbikes went on the rampage in the villages on Tuesday evening shooting people and burning houses.
Many people were also injured in Gobirawa and Sabawa villages.
This is the second time in a week that gunmen attacked the area killing several people and injuring others.
There's growing concern in northern Nigeria over the level of banditry and kidnapping in the states of Zamfara, Katsina and Kaduna.
The states have long faced problems with armed groups stealing cattle, kidnapping for ransom and attacking communities, which has in turn prompted some local people to form vigilante gangs.
The Nigerian government has deployed troops to the region but that has yet to bring the violence to an end.
Buhari's relative kidnapped in Nigeria
Police say gunmen have kidnapped a traditional ruler in Daura who is distantly related to Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari.
Musa
Umar was seized on
Wednesday evening from in front of his house by abductors who fired
shots into the air, Katsina state Police Spokesman Gambo Isa told the
BBC's Nasidi Adamu Yahya.
Local police say one officer who was injured in a confrontation with the kidnappers is receiving treatment at a local hospital.
Mr
Umar is a distant relative by marriage of President Buhari, as well as
being the father-in-law of one of his senior aides. Daura is the
president's home town.
The
BBC's Joshua Ajayi in Lagos says the kidnapping is an embarrassment to
the president, as it shows that just about anyone can be abducted.
The president's office has not yet commented on the incident.
Kidnappings, often for ransom, are on the rise in north-western Nigeria.
On Tuesday, dozens of gunmen attacked two villages in the same state and killed 14 people.
The
Nigerian government has repeatedly claimed it is tackling the problem
by deploying troops to the region but that has yet to bring the violence
to an end.
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Support for Scottish independence has risen to its highest point in the past four years, largely driven by voters who want to remain in the European Union…
As the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) meets for its spring conference, the YouGov poll showed support for secession from the United Kingdom had risen to 49 percent from 45 percent at the last YouGov poll carried out for The Times in June 2018.
Scots rejected independence by 45-55 percent in a 2014 referendum. Then the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum, but among its four nations Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay, feeding political tension.
Britain is mired in political chaos and it is still unclear when or even if it will leave the EU.
YouGov also found that 53 percent of Scots thought there should not be another referendum on independence within the next five years…
The poll also showed voters moving away from both the Conservatives and the Labour Party north of the English border…
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A leader of the Chinese community in northern Nigeria has been crowned, or "turbaned", as a chief by the Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
The emir holds a lot of influence and is a religious and cultural leader in the region.
At a traditional ceremony in Kano Mike Zhang took the title of Wakilin Yan China, meaning the leader of the Chinese residents, as his head was wrapped in a turban.
Mike Zhang
This ceremony is a recognition of the growing importance of the Chinese community in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria, BBC Hausa editor Jimeh Saleh says.
There are a lot of Chinese businesses and traders in the city who are sometimes accused of taking other people's jobs and engaging in unfair competition.
Mr Zhang will be a vital link between the Chinese community and the locals.
At least 12 civilians have been killed in multiple Boko Haram attacks targeting two villages and a camp for those displaced by fighting in northeastern Nigeria…
Boko Haram fighters arrived in seven trucks late on Wednesday and attacked Bulaburin and Kofa villages, as well as a camp in Dalori village outside Maiduguri…
"The terrorists attacked and completely burned Bulaburin and Kofa villages and burnt half the Dalori 2 IDP (internally displaced persons) camp," Babakura Kolo, civilian militia leader, told AFP news agency.
The fighters invaded the camp after overrunning troops and the militia and "burnt half the camp" by setting fires and firing rocket-propelled grenades on buildings…
The area has been attacked multiple times before by the Boko Haram faction loyal to Abubakar Shekau.
Despite government insistence that Boko Haram are near defeat, northern Nigeria is still hit by heavy fighting.
Since the group launched its campaign in 2009, Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 people and forced two million others to flee their homes in northeast Nigeria.
Over the years, the armed group - which wants to form a breakaway Islamic state - has kidnapped thousands of adults and children.
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Buoyed by the results of a controversial nationwide referendum, Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that his administration will cancel construction of a partially completed, $13-billion international airport and instead move forward with plans for a less expensive alternative.
Texcoco airport project
“The decision is to abide by the mandate of citizens,” the president-elect, who assumes office on Dec. 1, said at a news conference. “This is democracy.”
The revised plan, he said, would save Mexican taxpayers the equivalent of more than $5 billion.
But abandoning the new airport in the Texcoco area northeast of Mexico City also means the loss of some $5 billion that already has been spent on the project. The airport in Texcoco, which would have been the third largest commercial airport in the world, is about one-third complete…
The entire modified project — including rail connections between the various airfields — should be completed in three years, the president-elect vowed, and will resolve the gridlock at Mexico City’s over-burdened current airport…
Lopez Obrador was defiant Monday when asked about his decision's potential impact on Mexico's financial markets and business interests. In his administration, he said, no "pressures" would be tolerated from economic elites.
"What I would say to those corrupt businessmen and contractors is that they get used to it, that they take a mental exercise, an exercise in adaptation," the president-elect said, a day after voters rejected the Texcoco project. "The decision that the citizens took yesterday is rational, democratic and efficient."
The new plan puts Mexico’s new leftist president at odds with much of the country’s business and investor community, which largely backed completing the Texcoco project. Supporters said the expansive facility planned for Texcoco would draw additional visitors, investment and businesses to Mexico, while providing a vital transport hub…
But critics had assailed the Texcoco project as a corruption-plagued boondoggle and environmental calamity for the dry lake bed where the facility is being built.
The president-elect’s decision was anticipated after Mexicans voted overwhelmingly in a four-day referendum, or “consultation,” to scrap the Texcoco airport and pursue the more economical option.
Critics called the referendum a farce engineered by Lopez Obrador, who has long assailed the Texcoco project as too costly and laden with corruption…
There was no immediate reaction from the Texcoco project’s major builders, among them a construction firm owned by billionaire Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man. Slim’s son-in-law, Fernando Romero, is one of the architects of the futuristic new airport in Texcoco.
But a business group said in a news conference that construction at Texcoco would continue until at least Nov. 30, the last day of the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. The Texcoco airport is the outgoing president’s signature infrastructure project.
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China’s far north-western region of Xinjiang has retroactively legitimised the use of internment camps where up to one million Muslims are being held…
Chinese authorities deny that the internment camps exist but say petty criminals are sent to vocational “training centres”. Former detainees say they were forced to denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the Communist party in what they describe as political indoctrination camps…
“It’s a retrospective justification for the mass detainment of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang,” said James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policies at Melbourne’s La Trobe University…
The revisions, published on Tuesday, say government agencies at the county level and above “may establish occupational skills education and training centres, education transformation organisations and management departments to transform people influenced by extremism through education”.
A new clause directs the centres to teach the Mandarin language and provide occupational and legal education, as well as “ideological education, psychological rehabilitation and behaviour correction”. Another new clause bars “refusing public goods like radio and television.”…
“Overall, this clearly strengthens the legal basis for the type of re-education that has essentially been admitted by the state … indicating that the state is determined to proceed with the current campaign,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher who focuses on Xinjiang…
Beijing has spent decades trying to suppress pro-independence sentiment in Xinjiang fuelled in part by frustration about an influx of migrants from China’s Han majority. Authorities say extremists there have ties to foreign terror groups but have given little evidence to support the claim…
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For the second time, Nigeria has been ranked the country with the highest inequality among its citizens by OXFAM.
OXFAM, a global civil society body that fights against injustice, and its partners indicate that Nigeria's social spending (on health, education and social protection) is shamefully low, which is reflected in very poor social outcomes for its citizens.
"One in 10 children in Nigeria does not reach their fifth birthday, and more than 10 million children do not go to school. Sixty percent of these are girls," the report said.
The index, released yesterday at the Annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank Meetings in Bali, Indonesia… showed that in the past year, Nigeria recorded increase in the number of labour rights violations. Its minimum wage has not increased since 2011 and social spending has stagnated.
The index ranked 157 countries on their policies on social spending, tax, and labour rights - three areas that the group believes are critical to reducing inequality.
Other countries with high inequality ranking include; Uzbekistan… Haiti… Chad… and Sierra Leone…
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Nigeria's presidential election was shaping up to be a contest between two veteran male politicians, but the candidacy of Oby Ezekwesili could change that.
Ezekwesili
Women have run for the presidency before but she is the most prominent Nigerian woman to challenge for the top job…
Ms Ezekwesili is well known for leading the #BringBackOurGirls campaign to help free the 276 girls kidnapped from Chibok, northern Nigeria, in 2014. She has also served as the country's education minister and vice-president of the World Bank.
But come February's vote it will be a tough challenge to unseat incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari, 75, or beat the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, 72, who both have formidable party machines behind them…
At the weekend, President Buhari was nominated by his All Progressives Congress (APC) and Mr Abubakar beat a field of 11 others to become the flag bearer for the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
The two parties have supplied all of Nigeria's presidents since the end of military rule in 1999.
For Ms Ezekwesili the men she is facing represent a "mediocre political class that bumbles from one crisis to another", as she told the meeting of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), where her candidacy was declared.
She is setting herself up as the anti-establishment candidate, calling the politicians in charge of the country part of "an evil ruling class". And, in an Obama-like move, the ACPN is labelling her as the "hope" candidate.
Ms Ezekwesili, who is 55 years old, is also trying to appeal to the youth of the country, saying that the people in charge do not understand the technological changes that are happening.
More than 50% of Nigerians are under the age of 30.
Can she disrupt the election? -Chris Ewokor, BBC Africa, Abuja
Along with reaching out to Nigeria's youth, Ms Ezekwesili has an obvious appeal to women, and her high profile in the country and international respectability could also boost her candidacy.
She is also from the south of the country, while the two leading men are from the north, so this could help her pick up votes among southerners who want one of their own to lead the country.
Ms Ezekwesili is likely to elicit some support and could make the APC and PDP nervous, but the power of the established parties may be hard to overcome.
Many in the country are hungry and live under extreme economic pressure and could be tempted to back parties with deeper pockets if they are promised money to vote a particular way.
The APC and PDP have countrywide structures and a war chest that could clearly outspend Ms Ezekwesili.
In response, her party has launched a funding campaign to try and build up its financial resources, but it is not clear if that will be enough...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_(political_science) Big Man (Political Science) from Wikipedia
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Can the people in Nigeria overcome culture, ethnicity, and economics to become Nigerians?
Most news reports about the conflicts between farmers and herders in Nigeria's Middle Belt come from southern sources and seem to describe the herders as evil invaders. This report seems more balanced.
Across parts of Nigeria, conflicts that mirror the 20th Century range wars in the American West have broken out between farmers and herdsmen vying for land, leading to bloody battles.
In the first six months of this year, these clashes killed an estimated 1,300 people –- six times the number who died in the war with the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in the same period, the International Crisis Group says.
About 300,000 people have been forced from their homes because of violence between farmers and herders, conflicts that are often exacerbated by religion, ethnicity and even the erratic weather patterns that accompany climate change and create competition between humans and cattle for water.
Herder in Nigeria
Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Kenya and other areas across the continent where populations are rising struggle with the problem as well. Here in Nigeria, where the population has quadrupled in the past 60 years to nearly 200 million, the fighting has been so fierce that the government deployed the military to contain some of the battles.
Numerous regional bodies, including the Economic Community of West African States, have pledged to protect the rights of herdsmen, but little action has been taken. Nigeria’s federal government has proposed setting aside land for herders, yet the country is also grappling with widespread unemployment. So it is pushing more people into farming, which adds to the tensions.
Some states have banned open grazing entirely. Local laws that aim to address the conflicts are largely unenforced, especially in rural areas where government is virtually nonexistent.
Like the majority of herdsmen, Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, is ethnically Fulani Muslim. And though he has done little to contain the violence or help herdsmen, he is often perceived as siding with Fulanis, who are one of the major ethnic groups of the north…
In much of Nigeria, especially the mostly Christian south, Fulani herdsmen are considered terrorists and compared to Boko Haram, notorious for rapes and beheadings. News reports often focus on killings by herdsmen without mentioning deadly attacks by farmers…
Gombe State… is known for its wide-open spaces and peaceful relations between farmers and herdsmen. Many of the farmers here are also Fulani, like the herders, and ethnic tension is minimal.
But even in this state, open land is being squeezed…
On Aug. 15, thousands of protesters took to Moscow’s streets for the “March of the Mothers,” armed with stuffed animals, seeking the release of teens who were jailed in March. The parents allege that Russian officials entrapped their children, detaining them on false charges of plotting to overthrow the government. What’s going on?
1. Russia has been cracking down on what it calls extremists since 2002
When in 2002 Russia’s Duma first passed anti-extremism laws that banned stopping any religious group from asserting it was superior to any other… [T]he Duma steadily expanded the laws’ scope over the years: in 2014 to track “extremist” bloggers, and in 2015 to include “liking” social media posts the government considers extremist…
2. Russian youths have taken on a growing role in opposition protests
When opposition leader Alexei Navalny posted YouTube videos inviting Russians to protest en masse in 2017, young Russians turned out in large numbers — and the authorities have targeted them particularly…
On March 2, 2017, Navalny posted one of his most incendiary videos on YouTube: an exposé alleging that Prime Minster Dmitry Medvedev funnels public money through his charity organizations for his own use and uses those charities to hide funds and property. Among the memorable allegations was that Medvedev even has luxury accommodations for his ducks.
Organized protests erupted across 90 cities in Russia after the video was aired. Many people — including young people — took to the streets with yellow rubber duckies…
3. Young people accused of anti-government plots are in jail
Now we come to what triggered the “March of the Mothers.” Ten protesters have been held since March and charged with using social media for “involvement in a terrorist community.” They’re part of a group called Novoe Velichie or New Greatness. Two are young women: Anna Pavlikova was 17 at the time of her arrest, and Maria Dubovik was 19.
The teens argue that they were not interested in overthrowing the government. While they acknowledge they posted comments critical of the government, they argue that they were merely venting, not plotting. On Aug. 16, in response to pressure from the protests, a Moscow court released them on house arrest.
Authorities may have been particularly irritated because the young women were using the chat application Telegram to vent. Telegram is a media app popular because it encrypts messages so that only the sender and receiver can read them. The Russian government has tried to shut down Telegram recently, because whistleblowers have used the platform to send tips to journalists or to Navalny. But Russians have protested the government’s attempts to block the platform.
4. Were Russian security services actually the ones doing the plotting?
The teens’ lawyer insists that the charges are false. According to an investigation by OVD-Info, an organization that monitors politically motivated arrests inside Russia, a Federal Security Service (FSB) agent actually founded New Greatness, fully funded the group, stirred up the members’ emotions, gave youths meeting space and trained selected members on the use of explosive devices.
Because Telegram doesn’t allow children to create their own account, Anna had to use her mother’s account. This gives her mother, Yulia Pavlikova, full access to the records.
Pavlikova describes the entrapment as a step-by-step process. First, the organizer Ruslan D. began by building trust with the youths. Then, she says, after encouraging complaints about the government, he pushed them to move beyond talking, organized a meeting at a McDonald’s, and bought them a printer. Soon they were making fliers and passing them out. None of it would have happened, Pavlikova claims, if this FSB agent had not organized and provoked them.
5. The noose continues to tighten around civil society in Russia
None of this bodes well for the future of civil society. Government repression has proceeded from attacking the free press to politically opposing average citizens’ ability to express discontent with their government — including, now, that of teenagers.
Will this generation, which has grown up under Putin, be subdued by these authoritarian tactics? Or will they react against them, as the Kremlin apparently fears?
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Nigeria is beleaguered by security threats. In the northeast, Islamist extremists from Boko Haram and its splinter groups are waging increasingly complex attacks on military forces and civilians. In the middle part of the country, more than 1,300 people have been killed in increasingly vicious land disputes between cattle herders and farmers. Farther to the south, violence spikes from time to time in the Biafra region, where separatists are pushing to secede. And in various pockets throughout the country, like a major highway between Kaduna and Abuja, kidnappings of prominent figures and regular Nigerians alike have become common.
The threats are becoming a major issue for President Muhammadu Buhari as he tries for a second term in February. Increasingly, critics, and even allies, complain about his failure to take control of the security situation…
After almost a decade into the Boko Haram insurgency, security resources on the frontlines of the conflict are increasingly stretched. On Sunday, according to local reports, several soldiers brought an airport in Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria, to a halt, shooting into the air and threatening their superiors to protest working conditions. It is the third time this year that security forces have protested their plight stemming from the conflict.
Recently, security has deteriorated significantly. In July alone, a total of more than 400 people were killed by Boko Haram or gangs in Zamfara, or in the herder-farmer conflict, according to the International Crisis Group.
People prepare to flee a village near Jos
In recent weeks, Mr. Buhari’s All Progressives Congress party has been hit with a wave of defections. More than 50 lawmakers, state governors and party members have joined the opposition People’s Democratic Party, many of them worried that any alignment with the president could challenge their prospects in next year’s elections.
And bizarre events have left many in the nation concerned about the general state of democracy. Twice in recent weeks, security forces from the Department of State Services, the top spy agency, have appeared in black face masks outside the National Assembly. On Aug. 7, they blocked lawmakers from entering.
Later that day, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo fired the head of the agency. And on Tuesday, he announced that a notorious security agency, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, would be shut down. The decision was widely welcomed; it followed several months of criticism that Mr. Buhari was again deaf to the concerns of Nigerians, after several protests against alleged abuses by the agency…
The violence has also fueled ethnic divisions within the state between the Hausa and Fulani communities. Many gangs are thought to comprise mostly Fulani members, but Fulani have also been victimized. When they show up at displaced persons camps, Hausa victims have tried to push them away.
Lawal Mustapha, a university student in Zamfara, said he hoped the military intervention in Zamfara would lead to lasting changes. “We want them to restore Zamfara to how it was before all these killings, a peaceful state,” he said. “That will only happen if they improve security permanently, not just to send soldiers in who will then leave soon after.”
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This is a great article that identifies cleavages and causes of conflict. Where are the conflicts happening? What are the causes? What factors limiting the government?
Clashes between armed herdsmen and farmers in Nigeria are escalating to increasingly violent episodes as a battle for scarce resources stirs long-held tensions over religion and ethnicity…
On Friday and Saturday night dozens of suspected armed herders, who are Muslim and of the Fulani ethnicity, descended from surrounding hills into several villages, opening fire, burning homes and shooting to death some people, most of them Christian and of the Berom ethnicity, as they slept.
The killings immediately triggered reprisals as young people from the villages set up road blocks and killed anyone suspected of being Muslim and Fulani. One police commissioner in the area said at least five people died at checkpoints.
Conflict between herders and farmers over natural resources has a long history throughout sub-Saharan Africa…
The issue has particularly polarized Nigeria, especially in the Middle Belt, the agrarian bread basket that stretches across the country.
-New York Times
As the nation’s population has soared and available grazing land has shrunk, farmers have settled on land that herders have used for hundreds of years as grazing routes to move their cattle seasonally.
Many parts of the country have been affected by the conflicts, including in the north, where Muslims constitute most of the farmers. But much of the recent surge in violence has taken place in the Middle Belt, where the herders are typically ethnic Fulani and Muslim, and the farmers are mostly Christian.
The attacks are testing the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, who came to office in 2015 vowing to instill security. Many Nigerians say that promise has been unfulfilled…
Mr. Buhari, a Muslim and Fulani, has been accused of allowing the attacks to continue, and his vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, a Christian, has been faulted for failing to speak out…
“The emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari has emboldened the Fulani herdsmen who have been invading Christian communities, killing, maiming and destroying with impunity,” [Adebayo Oladeji, a spokesman for the Christian Association of Nigeria] said. “These criminals are being treated with kid gloves.”
Abiodun Baiyewu, the director of Global Rights Nigeria, a human rights group, said the government’s failure to combat the violence has deepened ethnic and religious suspicions and widened divisions…
Military officials have attributed the surge in killings, in part, to a migration of pastoralists from neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon that is being propelled by changing climate conditions and insecurity. Specifically, the war with Boko Haram has spilled into areas where nomadic herders typically roam, forcing them to find new terrain.
But they also note that criminals and militias are behind at least some of the recent attacks. Often, the Fulani are used as the scapegoat…
Because many herders lead a nomadic culture, they have few advocates. One of them, Mohammed Bello, a former adviser to a local cattle breeders association, said pastoralists are routinely, and often wrongly, characterized as perpetrators.
“The conflict has become so politicized and driven by a specific narrative that the media no longer distinguish between banditry, other criminal factors and the traditional conflict,” Mr. Bello said.
An ineffective security structure in rural areas is fueling fears, said Sola Tayo, a fellow at the Chatham House research group.
“People in rural communities are incredibly exposed and response times to reports of attacks are poor,” Ms. Tayo said. “The police service in Nigeria is inadequate for the size of the population and is very much urbanized, leaving people in remote areas vulnerable.”
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A stay-at-home protest by Biafran separatists in Nigeria has crippled cities and towns in the south-east.
Streets are empty and markets, banks and schools are closed to mark the abortive attempt in 1967 to gain independence for the region.
It led to a bitter three-year civil war in which more than one million people were killed.
The authorities have warned the secessionists against street protests and security forces are on patrol.
South-eastern Nigeria is mainly inhabited by the ethnic Igbo community, who often complain of marginalisation - accusing successive governments of failing to develop their areas…
The BBC Igbo service says there has been a total shutdown in the Igbo heartland of Enugu and Anambra states…
People have been sending in photos to BBC Igbo of deserted streets, including one of the iconic Niger River Bridge in Onitsha, known as the gateway to the east, which is usually congested with traffic…
Onitsha Bridge
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In the early 1990s, Ken Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) trying to get recognition of the destruction of the environment in "Ogoniland," a terribly polluted region of southeast Nigeria. His execution/murder in 1995 focused attention on the corrupt and authoritarian government of military ruler Sani Abacha. The movement and the struggle Saro-Wiwa started continue. This report comes from Al Jazeera. The video is about 3 minutes long.
This was originally posted by Dave Kruiswyk at the Facebook group, AP Comparative Government and Politics Teacher Page.
The report comes from VICE News which is an international reporting organization. It employs over 100 reporters in 35 offices around the world. (See VICE News on Wikipedia
I don't know enough about VICE News to have a handle on its editorial biases, but this report seems to be more adventurous than mainstream media. Financing comes from its UTube channel and sales of its reports to various cable networks.
This report looks accurate and realistic to me, who has never been there. There are a couple profane expletives that you might want to preview before using this in class.
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Trivia to me - vital ethnic identity to some Iranian Arabs
The primary source of this story comes from Al Arabiya.
The protests in Iran are taking place in the province of Khuzestan, located in the southwest part of the country adjoining the Persian Gulf. The province is the heart of Iran's oil wealth. A problem is that Khuzestan is also home to most of Iran's Arab minority (about 2% of the country's population). Ahwaz is a region in Khuzestan.
We haven't heard much about this region because it's been repeatedly suppressed by Iranian regimes (pre- and post-revolutionary). It is a reminder that political cleavages often persist even after major political changes.
Iranian security forces, backed by units of anti-riot police and the Revolutionary Guard, suppressed night demonstrations on the fourth day of protests by Arab citizens in the center of the city on Saturday…
Videos and images shared on social media and local Ahwaz TV channels showed protesters holding up signs in Arabic, English and Ahwazi calling on the UN to stop the discrimination against Arabs by Iranian authorities…
According to the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, protesters called for the release of political prisoners and an end to demographic changes that are in favor of migrants, not Arabs.
Other demands included an end to the marginalization of the Arab Ahwaz, efforts to combat poverty, unemployment and pollution.
It began with a televised address in Iran in celebration of Persian New Year on Tuesday, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei urged Iranians to support local products rather than importing from abroad.
Soon afterwards, photos began to emerge on social media of some officials purportedly failing to follow that advice - including Khamenei himself.
A photo of the Supreme Leader apparently getting out of a BMW was liked more than 1,200 times, with some people reposting the image alongside a picture of pre-Islamic Republic Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda driving the first Iranian-made Paykan car in the 1960s.
This tweet reads: "The PM of the corrupt Pahlavi regime driving a domestically made car, but the spiritual Leader of Muslims around the world riding on the unbelievers' hundred-million [dollar] car, the Republic of mottos."
Some people defended Khamenei over the photo, with one person suggesting that the car may have belonged to the security department and not him.
But others were highly critical, with one person labelling locally-made cars as "junk products", and another sharing images of badly damaged Iranian cars in response…
Other members of the Khamenei family who came in for criticism include Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament whose daughter married Ali Khamenei's son Mojtaba.
In one tweet liked more than 700 times, a person shared pictures of Haddad-Adel appearing to buy clothes from a popular British high street shop…
This tweet reads: "#support_for_Iranian_products just by Haddad-Adel, father-in-law of Mojtaba Khamenei, the Prince of Iran, who is buying clothes in the wicked Britain."
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Cambridge Analytica… had been hired by a rich Nigerian who supported the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan.
“It was the kind of campaign that was our bread and butter,” says one ex-employee. “We’re employed by a billionaire who’s panicking at the idea of a change of government and who wants to spend big to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
This was a standard variation on what SCL had done around the world for 30 years – this time, with a twist. Weaponising information to harm an opponent was standard methodology…
What was new, or at least new to those employees who have now spoken out, was bringing these techniques to the company’s election work.
Seven individuals with close knowledge of the Nigeria campaign have described how Cambridge Analytica worked with people they believed were Israeli computer hackers…
They said the hackers offered Cambridge Analytica access to private information about Buhari…
The Observer has obtained an astonishing and disturbing video that Cambridge Analytica used in the campaign.
“Coming to Nigeria on February 15th, 2015,” the voiceover says in the manner of a trailer for a Hollywood movie.
“Dark. Scary. And very uncertain. Sharia for all.” And then it poses the question: “What would Nigeria look like if sharia were imposed by Buhari?”
The company confirmed… that it had been hired to provide “advertising and marketing services in support of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign”.
That work seems to have come about through Brittany Kaiser, a senior director at Cambridge Analytica, who would go on to play a public role at the launch of Nigel Farage’s Leave.eu campaign, and a senior strategist on the Trump campaign…
In a statement, SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, confirmed it had been hired in December 2014 in support of the Jonathan campaign.
“We can confirm that SCL Elections was hired in December 2014 to provide advertising and marketing services in support of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign.”
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Just The Facts! 2nd editionis a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
In a country where the Communist Party makes all the big decisions, Chinese lawmakers hold very little political power. But they have plenty of money — $650 billion of it — and that’s growing.
Beijing street scene
According to the Hurun Report,… the net worth of the 153 members of China’s Parliament… that it deems “super rich” amounts to $650 billion…
While President Xi Jinping has pledged to close the income gap and alleviate poverty, the wealth of the nation’s lawmakers has kept soaring. In 2017, it topped $500 billion, more than doubling from the year before…
[The NPC session] provides business people with an opportunity to hobnob with one another. The title of delegate also gives them extra cachet in making business deals.
The wealthiest lawmaker is also China’s richest person, Pony Ma, whose net worth is $47 billion. He is the founder of Tencent, which owns WeChat, a social media mobile app that is indispensable in Chinese life. Tencent is now valued at $540 billion, more than Facebook…
The fortunes of China’s entrepreneurs have changed significantly since the Communist Party, which was founded to work for the interests of workers and stamp out capitalism, welcomed business people into the party more than a decade ago…
Victor Shih, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, and an expert on money and politics in China, said that being a member of the National People’s Congress “affords a considerable protection for the wealthy.”
“If you’re part of the NPC, you become a state cadre, and so the local police can’t arrest you easily without cause,” he said, referring to the congress.
“That’s not the case for a wealthy person who has no affiliation with the Chinese government, and wealth becomes very vulnerable to predatory action by a local government.”
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Just The Facts! 2nd editionis a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
[T]he Zapatistas, [are] the indigenous peasant rights movement from dirt-poor Chiapas state, which took up arms and occupied San Cristóbal on 1 January 1994, the day Mexico signed up to Nafta, the North American free trade agreement.
Welcoming committee for tourists
The rag-tag rebel Zapatista national liberation army (EZLN)… freed prisoners, burned military posts and seized ranches in protest at centuries of what they saw as oppression by large landowners and the government…
“Zapatourismo is big,” says Manuel Heredia, a young Chamula Indian who was brought up in what is now a Zapatista community. “We have many American, British, Italian and others coming here. Every day sympathisers come to San Cristóbal. They want to know about 1994, and what happens now.”
Today the Zapatistas, who have never disarmed, claim to control much of the state of Chiapas. “There are 50,000 families, or nearly 300,000 people in 55 municipalities. Their rules of ‘good government’ involve giving their time several days a week to the community, sharing food, helping to teach the young, and organising,” says Heredia…
Three masked Zapatistas sit, as in an interviewing panel, at a table… “I will answer your questions all as one,” says their young spokeswoman, a masked Tzotzil woman, who will not give her name or say where she is from… “We were forgotten. Now we are known by everyone. In 1994, we had no hospitals or schools. Now we have them. Our work was hard. Now it is much better.”
She says the Zapatistas are unvanquished and happier, despite the Mexican government’s continuing hostility. “We do not need the government. We do not use them. We have our own indigenous government. We have different problems now, but we are finding the solutions ourselves…
But while they reject globalisation, they are its beneficiaries, receiving aid from support groups in Britain, the US and across Europe. “Capitalism exploits and dominates. We are developing a new form of governance. The decisions [about how we live] are now made by the communities, not by government,” the young woman says.
She rejects suggestions that the Zapatistas have become a political cult that has turned its back on the outside world. “No. We are now self-reliant. We have email and the internet. We are part of a global indigenous movement. But our children don’t go to university. We teach ourselves. Our people work everywhere now, as teachers, farmers, communicators. We work with other Zapatistas and indigenous groups. The base of our society is people, not the capitalist system…
There are signs that the Zapatistas are ready to play a bigger part in wider Mexican politics. Although they have stated in the past that they want no part in state elections, they have an elected leader, María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, also known as “Marichuy”, who hopes to stand in the May presidential elections as the first indigenous woman candidate. She is not a Zapatista herself but there are 25 million indigenous people in Mexico, and many back her stand against deforestation, mining and the mega-projects that are devastating the country…
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Local police say one officer who was injured in a confrontation with the kidnappers is receiving treatment at a local hospital.
