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Africa’s richest woman under pressure to step down from Angolan energy firm Award-winning reporter and campaigner Rafael Marques has asked Angola’s attorney general to revoke appointment of Isabel dos Santos as head of Sonangol Rafael Marques, an Angolan human rights activist, has asked the country’s attorney general to revoke the appointment of Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, as head of Sonangol, accusing president José Eduardo dos Santos of acting unconstitutionally by putting his daughter in charge of the state energy firm, after the shock sacking of its board. Isabel dos Santos already owns a 25% stake in Unitel, Angola’s first private mobile phone operator, and is a major shareholder in several other big companies in Angola and Portugal. President Dos Santos, who came to power in 1979, appointed his daughter to head Sonangol in June by presidential decree in a shake-up that cements his dynastic grip on power in the oil exporter. “With matters of natural strategic resources, the president cannot change the rules as he pleases. He must seek a request from the parliament. He did not do that and, therefore, the reforms on Sonangol are unconstitutional,” the award-winning reporter and campaigner Marques said, adding that he has filed three requests with the attorney general’s office. “The appointments as a consequence of these reforms are also unconstitutional as they are illegal. The president uses his decrees to award state contracts to his family,” he said. Angola, currently Africa’s top oil producer because of supply outages caused by militant attacks in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, said in April it would restructure Sonangol to increase efficiency and profitability. English-educated Isabel dos Santos is worth an estimated $3bn (£2.09bn). The average wage in Angola is just under $2 a day. In a rare interview with Reuters, the 43-year-old pledged to bring openness and efficiency to the 40-year-old company that is frequently criticised as opaque and unwieldy. “Our objective is to increase the revenue, efficiency and transparency of the company,” she said. “We want to implement governance rules similar to the international standards.” State media said experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Boston Consulting Group would be brought in to assist in the shake-up at the firm, a pillar of Angola’s economy. Some foreign oil firms have welcomed the appointment, brushing aside concerns about political motives. “The government has acted. It is clear the direction they want to go. I am always optimistic. I certainly support the direction Sonangol is taking,” Chevron’s managing director for Angola, John Baltz, said last week. However, one senior Johannesburg-based banker told Reuters the appointment could make it more difficult for international banks to do business with Sonangol, given the perception of nepotism it creates. President Dos Santos’s mild, inscrutable public demeanour belies his tight control of the former Portuguese colony, where he has overseen an oil-backed economic and construction boom in the wake of a devastating 27-year civil war that ended in 2002. The collapse in oil prices has hit the economy hard, sending the currency to record lows against the dollar, and has seen the government seeking IMF assistance. She dismissed suggestions it was her family connections, rather than business acumen, that led to her appointment after the surprise dismissal of the Sonangol board. On 9 June, a group of lawyers led by David Mendes and Luis Nascimento challenged the manner of her appointment, saying it went against public probity laws. The lawyers also presented their concerns to the supreme court. Angola’s main opposition party, the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) requested on Tuesday that parliament open an inquiry into the business of Sonangol. President Dos Santos, who rarely appears in public or gives interviews, said in March he intended to step down as president in 2018 but gave no reason for his decision and did not name a preferred successor.
Human rights lawyers ask for release of MI5 letter to Tony Blair attacking British intelligence role in torture of Libyans Richard Norton-Taylor Human rights lawyers have put pressure on the government to release a letter that Eliza Manningham-Buller, the then head of MI5, sent to Tony Blair attacking the role played by British intelligence agents in the abduction of two Libyans who were subsequently tortured. Public need answers in 'shocking' MI6 rendition scandal, says senior Tory In the letter, whose contents were exclusively revealed in the Guardian, Lady Manningham-Buller wrote to the prime minister in 2004 to complain about the conduct of MI6 officers, saying their actions had threatened Britain’s intelligence gathering and may have compromised the security and safety of MI5 officers and their informants. It was raised in the Commons on Monday by the Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael. He told Theresa May, the home secretary, that the letter was “particularly concerning” given the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service last week not to prosecute Sir Mark Allen, a senior MI6 officer. May replied that she would not comment on a document she said had apparently been leaked from the government. The home secretary is responsible for MI5, Britain’s domestic security service. The foreign secretary is responsible for MI6, the country’s spy agency that operates abroad. Cori Crider, of the human rights organisation Reprieve, said: “We now know that senior British intelligence officials were implicated in the abduction and rendition of two entire families, and that despite 28,000 pages going to CPS from the police, no one will stand trial for it.” She added: “This attitude by the home secretary cannot be squared with the vast amount of material in the public domain and risks undermining confidence in the whole investigation. It’s time for the government to come clean, release the key documents – like the Manningham-Buller letter – and apologise.” Ex-MI6 officer will not face charges over Libyan renditions The CPS last week said last week there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. It said prosecutors had concluded that Allen had been in contact with countries that detained Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi in 2004 as they were transferred to Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and that he had “sought political authority for some of his actions”. The CPS concluded: “Officials from the UK did not physically detain, transfer or illtreat the alleged victims directly, nor did the suspect have any connection to the initial physical detention of either man or their families.” Andrew Tyrie, the senior Conservative MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said: “It is now crucial to find out who authorised these operations.”
'They were psychopaths': how chaos in Libya fuels the migration crisis Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa are easy prey for kidnappers and militias in Libya, making the Mediterranean crossing far from the deadliest situation they face Patrick Kingsley When two-year-old Kevin appears from a scrum of flailing bodies in the middle of the southern Mediterranean and is thrust into the outstretched arms of a rescuer, there is a chance the Cameroonian toddler will be the first and last to emerge safely from his deflating raft. “First for the bambino!” calls Ahmad Al Rousan, a member of a Médecins Sans Frontières rescue team that has just pulled alongside in a high-speed launch. He’s talking about lifejackets. The MSF team want to ensure that the 18 infants crammed onboard the stricken inflatable have all got one before they start transferring people to the MSF mother ship, the Bourbon Argos. The passengers, however, either don’t understand or in their panic would rather just get their children to safety, wearing lifejackets or not. So they surge forward, thrusting toddlers towards the MSF crew. Suddenly there’s a real risk of a capsize. There are 140 people crammed onboard this flimsy raft, including 38 women, 15 of them pregnant. When they shift their weight, the boat becomes unsteady. Its inflatable tubes, already deflating, begin to sag under the increased pressure. Some of the passengers are getting crushed. Kevin somehow escapes the mayhem. Still stuck on the boat, his 22-year-old mother Natasha wonders if this is the end for her and her two older sons. Standing just a metre away in the MSF launch, team leader Sebastian Stein has similar fears. “We cannot manage this situation [in this way],” he says to his colleagues. MSF crews have rescued at least 24,000 people from the southern Mediterranean over the past two years. How many will they be able to save today? As terrifying as it is, crossing the Mediterranean is far from the deadliest situation these particular migrants have experienced recently. Had an eagle-eyed MSF lookout not spotted them drifting aimlessly about 25 miles (40km) north of Libya, they probably would have drowned. Having left Libya 10 and a half hours ago, their engine has stopped working and the boat is taking on water. On the road in Agadez: desperation and death along a Saharan smuggling route To even reach the sea, these west Africans all had to survive a horrific journey across the Sahara. If they don’t fall off the back of the smugglers’ pickup trucks, passengers are often kidnapped or beaten or die of dehydration. Their worst experiences, however, probably came inside Libya itself. Claimed by three rival regimes, and torn apart by a civil war waged between dozens of rival militias, Libya has become a hell on earth for migrant workers. In the security vacuum created by the absence of a strong central government, migrants have become easy prey for kidnappers and militias looking to raise money through ransoms, businessmen looking for slave labour and smugglers looking for passengers to exploit. More than 52,000 people, mainly sub-Saharan Africans, have fled this chaos for Italy since the start of the year, about the same number as in 2015, to the horror of European politicians. Following the closure of the eastern Mediterranean smuggling route in March, the EU is now trying to achieve something similar with the passage through the southern Mediterranean. Some European politicians have suggested returning migrants bound for Italy to Libya, while others have put pressure on Tripoli’s new UN-installed government to do more to curb migration by itself. The experiences of these 140 stricken people, bobbing on the open sea, show why this is a deeply problematic plan. Several report having been abused within Libya’s partly decentralised immigrant detention system, which is
run by several different militias. Most also say they were abused either by kidnappers who operate with impunity in Libya or by the people they paid to smuggle them to Europe. More widely, an Amnesty investigation released this week alleged that some migrants returned to Libya were tortured in government detention. Previous reporting by the Guardian and Vice News, among others, allege that some detention officials work in tandem with the country’s extortion rackets and smuggling cartels, supplying them with migrants in exchange for a fee. Before boarding the refugee boat, Francis Memfils, a 23-year-old rapper from Cameroon, had seemingly fallen victim to one such partnership. Four months ago, Memfils came to Libya in search of construction work. After living in Tripoli for just a few weeks, he says a group of armed Libyans picked him up off the street and delivered him to the local police station. Following a short detention, the police shoved him and others into a lorry and drove them to a kind of underground site, where he says he was told to pay a ransom or remain locked up. The MSF high-speed launch preparing to rescue people from the deflating inflatable and transfer them to the mother ship. Memfils doesn’t know which armed group ran the makeshift jail. “The people guarding this hole just had Kalashnikovs,” he says. “But the people who brought us there were the police.” The conditions inside were atrocious. Food was provided only sporadically. The prisoners lived in darkness. There were no toilets. “If you needed the toilet, you would piss or shit yourself,” Memfils says. Every so often, he claims the guards would shoot a prisoner, seemingly for the fun of it. “They were psychopaths,” he says. With no money for his ransom, Memfils says he stayed there for a month and a half, until a fellow prisoner paid for their joint release. Al Rousan gathers testimony from the people MSF rescues. He says he has not heard of the place Memfils described, but that there is rampant abuse of migrants at both government detention centres and at smugglers’ hideouts, also known as connection houses. Europe’s failure on refugees echoes the moral collapse of the 1930s “It’s very clear to me that the violence in detention centres and the connection houses is increasing this year, and the dehumanisation of people is increasing,” says Al Rousan. “It’s clear that in both, [migrants are] being forced to call their relatives to pay a ransom, even after their so-called rescue [at sea] by Libyans. Some people told us that people are taken out of these detention centres to work for free, and they’re not paid anything. How can Europe justify stopping the departures from Libya if they know that refugees will end up in these detention centres?” Stein uses stronger language. “The idea that some European politicians want to collaborate with the Libyan government to prevent people who are fleeing from the Libyan coast is gruesome and inhumane, and will only create more suffering,” he says. “It is completely the wrong way to look at the challenge. What fleeing people need is the possibility of seeking protection without going through this journey in the first place.” The abuse of Messie, a 16-year-old Cameroonian schoolgirl squeezed inside the packed dinghy, highlights the danger of collaborating too closely with Libya’s kaleidoscope of security forces. Like Memfils, she reports being exploited by some kind of uniformed Libyan authority. Those involved After being smuggled through the Sahara, “these men with guns and a brown uniform with camouflage came and imprisoned us,” Messie says. “It wasn’t an official prison, just a house. Sometimes they would come and make men work in the farms. They asked for money, and they said they would kill the people who didn’t have any. During the night, they would take girls and abuse them.” Suddenly, after three weeks in this state, the same uniformed men drove Messie and her group to Tripoli. There they spent a night in a connection house before being taken to the shore and loaded on to a boat. Tehio Jean Marie, a 35-year-old mechanic from Cameroon, had a similar tale to tell. Reaching the outskirts of Tripoli in May, his truck was stopped at a militia checkpoint. He says that he and about 20 other migrants were ordered off at gunpoint and taken to a camp where they were forced to work for several days without pay. “They would come every morning to take us to do painting work,” he recalls. “Every day was like that.” Anastasie, a 30-year-old Cameroonian beautician, was kidnapped by a gang in southern Libya. Arriving in a packed smuggler’s lorry from the Sahara, she says her driver then robbed her group and handed them over to
an armed group in a city called Sabha. “We thought that we would then continue the journey,” she recalls. “But instead they locked us inside a compound.” By her account, she was then told to pay 1,500 dinars (about £770) for her freedom, or to call friends to send her the money. The one contact she had in Libya wouldn’t pick up their phone, so the kidnappers began to beat her, she said. When she needed the toilet, she said her kidnappers refused to let her go, so she wet herself. Her friend finally answered the phone and sent the ransom money to the kidnappers. On Anastasie’s release, her friend scolded her for seeking work in Libya in the first place. “Why did you come here?” she was told. “There’s a war on, and no work!” Libya's people smugglers: inside the trade that sells refugees hopes of a better life Frightened, Anastasie says she then decided to make for Europe by boat. If she had headed back through the desert to Cameroon, she risked being kidnapped again. So she turned to the Mediterranean smugglers, who kept her locked up in a connection house for three weeks until being sent to sea. “You don’t have any power there,” she says. “They come and take women and do what they want with them.” Onboard the MSF mother ship, Dr Paola Mazzoni, one of four medics manning a fully-equipped emergency room, says such stories are consistent with the cases she deals with on a weekly basis in the Mediterranean. “You can have the biggest imagination in the world, and you can’t imagine the kind of violence they’ve been subjected to,” she says. “They don’t have many illnesses and infections. The problems are mostly from violence or from starvation or thirst.” Mazzoni often treats survivors of torture and rape. “We see that they have been beaten by big metallic tubes, they have wounds on their arms from when they try to protect their faces. One man said they tried to beat his eye. They also violate the women, but I try not to ask a lot because they’ve passed through a lot of tragedies. In the last rescue there was a woman who had a baby Many of the 140 people in the dinghy had previously seen Libya as a destination in itself, and had not intended to make for Europe.Faced with such rampant abuse, however, and fearing further kidnap if they tried to return across the Sahara to west Africa, they changed plans and made for Italy. “I wasn’t thinking of coming to Italy,” says Kennedy Akhigbe, a 22-year-old aluminium worker from Nigeria. “But there’s no other way. You can’t stay in Libya, and it’s too dangerous to go back through the desert. On my way here from Algeria, there were two girls who were raped and killed.” Now, adrift in the Mediterranean, out of sight of land, even this maritime escape route seems too deadly. MSF has arrived in the nick of time. The passengers surge towards the MSF launch, holding out children to the rescuers. Stein fears a stampede. 'Not even death can stop 200,000 migrants wanting to escape': Fire at Sea's Gianfranco Rosi To calm the situation, the speedboat driver tries to pull away, but people are still hanging on to it. Adults shout, babies screamand toddlers continue to be passed across the water. Kevin is followed by sixmonth-old Brian, a Cameroonian born on the migrant trail in Algeria. Then comes Devine, a three-month-old girl born in custody in Libya. Within seconds, half a dozen babies are onboard the MSF launch, and the rescue is becoming uncontrollable. Suddenly the speedboat breaks free. The raft steadies itself. The babies are brought safely to the Bourbon Argos. As had been the initial plan, the Argos itself draws alongside the refugees, and the remaining passengers are brought onboard in a more orderly fashion. All 140 lives are saved. One by one they reach safety, some dancing with joy, embracing their friends. Others are too exhausted to do more than slump on the deck, cramp in their limbs after their 11-hour ordeal. The majority sing joyful Christian hymns in French, having moments earlier been praying for their lives. “Jésus a accompli sa promesse,” they sing. “Jesus has kept his promise.” Ahead of them lies a depressing struggle inside Italy’s dysfunctional asylum system. For now though, most simply celebrated the feat of survival. “Are you a god?” Akhigbe asks one of his rescuers, moments after arriving on the Argos. “We thought we were going to die. And then we
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The Voice Mexico singer fatally shot days after Christina Grimmie murder Alejandro ‘Jano’ Fuentes was shot during possible carjacking in Chicago and died on Saturday – the day after funeral of slain contestant from US version A Chicago singer who appeared on the Mexican version of The Voice in 2011 has died after he was shot in an ambush while celebrating his birthday with friends. The Cook county medical examiner’s office confirmed that 45-year-old Alejandro “Jano” Fuentes died on Saturday. He was shot three times in the head late on Thursday outside his Tras Bambalinas School on Chicago’s south-west side. He died on Saturday, the day after the funeral of Christina Grimmie, who appeared on the US version of the show. A man fatally shot Grimmie a week earlier while she was signing autographs after a performance in Orlando, Florida. The attacker then killed himself. Fuentes got into his car with friends when an armed man suddenly ordered Fuentes out and shot him, police said. They had no suspects in the attack. WGN television said police were investigating whether the shooting was an attempted carjacking or a robbery. Friends of Fuentes in Chicago said they were holding a vigil and memorial for the singer at his studio in Chicago on Saturday evening.
Kenya upholds use of anal exam to determine sexual orientation Court in country where same-sex relations are a crime dismisses argument that exam is torture and degrading treatment A Kenyan court has upheld the use of anal examinations to determine a suspect’s sexual orientation, dismissing the argument that the procedure amounts to torture and degrading treatment. There was no violation of rights or the law, Mombasa high court judge Mathew Emukule said on Thursday. “I find no violation of human dignity, right to privacy and right to freedom of the petitioners,” he said. Two men had sought a court ruling to stop enforced anal examinations and HIV tests of men accused of being gay after they were subjected to the procedures. The two were arrested in a bar near Ukunda, a town along Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, in February 2015 on suspicion of engaging in homosexual sex, a criminal offence in Kenya. They still face the charges and, if convicted, could be jailed for 14 years. In their petition, the men said the anal examinations and HIV and hepatitis B tests they were forced to have amounted to torture and degrading treatment. The judge said the petitioners should have used their lawyers to seek injunction orders to avoid undergoing the tests. “I sat in court holding my chin in disbelief,” said Eric Gitari, the executive director of the Kenyan National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which has supported the petition. He said the men would appeal. “It’s so painful when we are trying to encourage the gay community to go to court to affirm their rights; the courts are instead affirming violation of their rights,” Gitari said. The judgment means that someone can be arrested on a rumour that they are gay and subjected to these tests, he said. “Do we want to use the nation’s scarce resources on this?” Amnesty International condemned the ruling. “Forcible anal examinations of men suspected of same-sex relationships is abhorrent, and violates the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment under international law. They should not be allowed to continue,” said director for East Africa, Muthoni Wanyeki. “It is also absurd as the government has no business proving or disproving consensual homosexual activity. It’s a violation of the right to privacy.”
Colombia’s FARC Rebels Sign Historic Ceasefire With Government “May this be the last day of the war.” (Reuters) - Colombia‘s government and leftist FARC rebels signed a historic ceasefire deal on Thursday, bringing them tantalizingly close to ending Latin America’s last major insurgency and sparking scattered celebrations in the Andean nation’s capital. The accord, capping three years of peace talks in Cuba, sets the stage for a final deal to end a conflict born in the 1960s out of frustration with deep socio-economic inequalities and that outlived all other major uprisings in the Americas. “May this be the last day of the war,” said bearded FARC commander Rodrigo Londono, better known by the nom de guerre Timochenko, his voice choked with tears after shaking hands with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos at a ceremony in Havana. Santos, 64, is half-way through his second term and has staked his legacy on peace in the face of opposition from sectors of the country who think the FARC should be crushed militarily. “This means nothing more and nothing less than the end of the FARC as an armed group,” Santos said, adding that the final peace deal would be signed in Colombia. “The children and youth of our country have never known a single day without the violence of the conflict. Neither have the adults.” In Colombia, even before Santos spoke, church bells pealed at noon to mark the start of the signing. Crowds in Bogota, the capital, gathered around giant TV screens set up in the streets to watch the ceremony unfold. About 1,000 people gathered in the Plaza Bolivar, near the presidential palace and the city’s main square, to celebrate. Some waved flags and balloons, others hugged. “I’m 76 and have lived this war all my life - I never thought the time would come when these characters would sign peace. I’m so happy - I can die in peace,” said Graciela Pataquiva, a retired teacher, crying as she spoke. Santos’ government says a peace deal would add one percentage point annually to economic growth in Colombia, which over the past two decades has turned itself around from a failing state to an emerging market darling. The deal went further than many had hoped, with the FARC committing to putting a final accord to the Colombian people in a plebiscite, a promise made by Santos that had been a key sticking point. Not everybody supports the peace process, and Santos will have to work hard to convince opponents to back it in a referendum. Under the agreement read out by mediators Norway and Cuba the rebels will lay down their arms within 180 days of a final agreement and demobilize into 23 temporary zones and eight camps. The ceasefire will only kick in when the final deal is agreed, although have already effectively stopped attacks for almost a year. During their transition into democratic politics the FARC’s weapons will be handed over the United Nations, which will begin a mission to verify the
ceasefire. The government will guarantee the safety of ex-rebels and their political allies, who have historically been targets for right-wing paramilitary groups, the accord said. Special protection units, comprised of both ex-rebels and security forces, will guard FARC politicians and other community leaders. Under accords already struck in Cuba, perpetrators of the worst crimes in the war will face “transitional justice” aimed more at finding out the historical truth than meting out harsh punishments. “This is an extraordinary achievement. But there are serious challenges ahead related to security, implementation and guarantees of no repetition,” said Roddy Brett, director of peace and conflict studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS” The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was one of many 20th century Latin American guerilla movements inspired by Marxist ideology and the success of the 1959 Cuban revolution. It began as a peasant revolt before exploding into a war that killed at least 220,000 and displaced millions. Across the region, other rebellions were either crushed by right-wing military governments or convinced to lay down their arms and join conventional politics by the 1990s. But funded by its involvement in the cocaine industry, the FARC grew in strength to a 17,000 strong force controlling vast swaths of territory. Kidnappings for ransom also helped bankroll the rebel group. That began to change in 2002, when former President Alvaro Uribe launched a U.S.-backed counterinsurgency campaign that killed many FARC leaders and reduced it to an estimated 7,000 fighters. Even after peace with the FARC, formidable obstacles to will remain. The smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) only recently said it will start talks, while gangs born out of right-wing paramilitary groups have taken over drug trafficking routes, filling the vacuum left by rebels, some say. “It’s great to end the war with the FARC, but we’ve got to be serious, we finish with the FARC but what about all the others?” said Jhon Duarte, a 26-year old mechanic, echoing the concerns of many Colombians. Despite the challenges and fierce opposition from some quarters to letting FARC rebels re-enter society after years of kidnapping and attacks across the country, the mood on Thursday was buoyant. “This is a beacon of hope, our children will be able to enjoy what we could not - a childhood of peace and a life in peace,” said Adriana Beltrán, a 25-year-old housewife in Bogota.
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Floods leave many dead in southern Ghana Deadly downpours cause widespread flooding along the Cape Coast as the West African wet season intensifies. By Everton Fox
Four days of heavy and steady rain has left at least 10 people dead in the south of Ghana. The streets of Accra have been left under water after the torrential downpours caused widespread flooding earlier this week. The nation's capital was hit bit 185mm of rain on Sunday, which is more than they would expect for the entire month of June. This is the wettest month of the year with an average rainfall of 178mm. Since the weekend a further 50mm of rain has fallen exacerbating the severe problems already faced. President John Dramani Mahama has surveyed the areas concerned. He was reported to have driven through several neighbourhoods on a motorcycle. Heavy downpours were also recorded 150km to the west of Accra in the Central Regional capital, Cape Coast where 10 people died in floods, Sandy Amartey, regional coordinator of the National Disaster Management organisation, told AFP. "In all we have 10 to 12 who lost their lives during this rainy season." The rains come too late to save the nations struggling coca crop. The region's Harmattan winds have been blamed for likely poor yield. The Harmattan is the cold, dry wind that blows across West Africa from the Sahara during the winter months. It does have a tendency to sap the moisture from the soil and can spoil the cocoa seeds. The rains finally arrived in March. Since then they have been insufficiently light and patchy until recently. This current spell of heavy showers is set to continue well into next week. The rainy season is not expected to ease significantly until early July.
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The World Anti-Doping Agency Just Shut Down Rio’s Olympic Testing Lab It supposedly didn’t meet WADA’s standards. SAO PAULO, Publisher/Editor - In- Chief Saadiq Busby Managing Editor Vashoun Kelly Writers Rafael marques Richard-Norton Taylor Patrick Kingsley Everton Fox Saadiq Busby PHOTOGRAPHER SAADIQ BUSBY- The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has suspended the credentials of a testing laboratory in Rio de Janeiro that didn’t conform with international standards, just over a month before the city hosts the Olympic Games. The decision, announced on Friday, adds to concerns about Rio‘s readiness to host the global sporting event in August as public services suffer amid a crisis in state finances. “The suspension will only be lifted by WADA when the laboratory is operating optimally,” Olivier Niggli, the incoming director general of the agency, said in a statement, without providing details about the problems at the lab. “The best solution will be put in place to ensure that sample analysis for the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games is robust,” the statement said. Doping is high on the agenda ahead of the Rio Games, the first Olympics to be held in South America, after the Russian team was suspended from athletics events there because of doping allegations in track and field. The Rio lab’s six-month provisional suspension is subject to an appeal during a 21-day window that started on Wednesday, when WADA first informed the laboratory of its decision. Samples intended for analysis at the premises will be redirected to another WADA-accredited laboratory, the agency said,
Turkish border guards kill eight Syrian refugees – reports Three children, four women and one man shot dead while trying to escape northern Syria, according to monitors Patrick Kingsley
Eight Syrian refugees have been shot dead by Turkish border guards as they tried to escape war-torn northern Syria, a human rights watchdog has claimed. Three children, four women and one man were killed on Saturday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It said a total of 60 Syrian refugees had been shot at the border since the start of the year. Six of this weekend’s casualties were from the same family, said the observatory’s founder, Rami Abdelrahman. “I sent our activists to hospital there, we have video [of the corpses], but we haven’t published it because there are children [involved],” he said. The Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists inside Syria, supported the claim, reporting that one of the children was as young as six. Syrian refugees have been making illegal crossings of the Turkish border as Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon have made it virtually impossible for them to leave Syria legally. There have been reports of shootings on the border since at least 2013, and rights groups fear that the number of incidents has increased since European countries, including Britain, began pressing Turkey to curb migration flows towards Europe late last year. Around 1 million refugees, roughly half of them Syrians, reached Europe from Turkey in the past two years. Turkey has promised to take back all those who reached Greece after 18 March. In recent months it has stopped Syrians refugees in Jordan and Lebanon from flying to Turkey without a visa. Some attribute the crackdown on Turkey’s Syrian border and the implementation of the new visa regime to the EU’s crackdown on arrivals from Turkey. “EU officials should recognise that their red light for refugees to enter the EU gives Turkey a green light to close its border, exacting a heavy price on war-ravaged asylum seekers with nowhere else to go,” Human Rights Watch said after a previous round of border shootings in March. A senior Turkish official said Turkey was investigating the latest allegations of shootings but was “unable to independently verify the claims”. The official added: “Turkey provides humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in northern Syria and follows an open-door policy, which means we admit refugees whose lives are under threat.” Turkey is building a wall along its southern perimeter, making it harder for Syrians to reach safety. Turkish diplomats say this is due to fears over infiltration by Isis rather than any animosity towards refugees. Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees – 2.7 million – than the rest of the world combined, and more refugees – around 3 million – than any other country. Critics say Turkey does not make it easy for refugees on its territory. In legal terms, it treats them as temporary guests rather than as refugees with rights under the terms of the 1951 UN refugee convention. Despite recent legislative changes, the vast majority of Syrians do not in practice have the right to work in Turkey. Syrian children can nominally go to Turkish schools, but in practice Unicef estimates that 325,000 schoolage Syrians are not in education, and many of them are forced to participate in child labour. Amnesty and Human Rights Watch allege that Turkey has deported some Syrians back to northern Syria, where Isis, Syrian rebels, the Syrian government, an al-Qaida franchise and Kurdish forces are all fighting for territory. Turkey denies the claims.
Explosive Shock’ As Britain Votes To Leave EU, Cameron Quits “The British people have made the very clear decision to take a different path and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.” Britain has voted to leave the European Union, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and dealing the biggest blow since World War Two to the European project of forging greater unity. Global financial markets plunged on Friday as results from a referendum defied bookmakers’ odds to show a 52-48 percent victory for the campaign to leave a bloc Britain joined more than 40 years ago. The pound fell as much as 10 percent against the dollar to touch levels last seen in 1985, on fears the decision could hit investment in the world’s fifth-largest economy, threaten London’s role as a global financial capital and usher in months of political uncertainty. The euro slid 3 percent. World stocks saw more than $2 trillion wiped off their value, with indices across Europe heading for their sharpest one-day drops ever. Britain’s big banks took a $100 billion battering, with Lloyds (LLOY.L), Barclays (BARC.L) and RBS (RBS.L) falling as much as 30 percent at one point. [MKTS/GLOB] The United Kingdom itself could now break apart, with the leader of Scotland - where nearly two-thirds of voters wanted to stay in the EU - saying a new referendum on independence from the rest of Britain was “highly likely”. An emotional Cameron, who led the “Remain” campaign to defeat, losing the gamble he took when he promised the referendum in 2013, said he would leave office by October. “The British people have made the very clear decision to take a different path and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction,” he said in a televised address outside his residence. “I do not think it would be right for me to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination,” he added, choking back tears before walking back through 10 Downing Street’s black door with his arm around his wife Samantha. Quitting the EU could cost Britain access to the EU’s trade barrier-free single market and means it must seek new trade accords with countries around the world. A poll of economists by Reuters predicted Britain was likelier than not to fall into recession within a year. The EU for its part will be economically and politically damaged, facing the departure of a member with its biggest financial center, a U.N. Security Council veto, a powerful army and nuclear weapons. The world’s biggest trading bloc — which rose out of the ashes of two world wars, fascist and communist totalitarianism to unite a continent of prosperous democracies — will lose around a sixth of its economic output. “It’s an explosive shock. At stake is the break up pure and simple of the union,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. “Now is the time to invent another Europe.” ‘VICTORY FOR FREEDOM’ The result emboldened eurosceptics in other member states, with French National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders demanding their countries also hold referendums. Le Pen changed her Twitter profile picture to a Union Jack and declared “Victory for freedom!” The vote will trigger at least two years of divorce proceedings with the EU, the first exit by any member state. Cameron, in office since 2010, said it would be up to his successor to formally start the exit process. His Conservative Party rival Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who became the most recognizable face of the Leave camp, is now widely tipped to seek his job. Johnson left his home to jeers from a crowd in the mainly pro-EU capital. He spoke to reporters at Leave campaign headquarters, taking no questions on his personal ambitions.
“We can find our voice in the world again, a voice that is commensurate with the fifth-biggest economy on Earth,” he said. Lawmakers from the opposition Labour Party also launched a no-confidence motion to topple their leader, leftist Jeremy Corbyn, accused by opponents in the party of campaigning only tepidly for its Remain stance. There was euphoria among Britain’s eurosceptic forces, claiming a victory over the political establishment, big business and foreign leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama who had urged Britain to stay in. “Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the eurosceptic UK Independence Party, describing the EU as “doomed” and “dying”. On the continent, politicians reacted with dismay. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who invited the French and Italian leaders to Berlin to discuss future steps, called it a watershed for European unification. Her foreign minister called it a sad day for Britain and Europe.
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