Swollen River Feeds Flooding Near Houston as Residents Flee
Aerial photos taken Sunday showed large swaths of Fort Bend County under water, and about 1,000 people had been evacuated from their homes there as of Tuesday morning, the Houston Chronicle reported. The skies were clear in the region on Tuesday, but an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain expected later this week could keep the Brazos in major flood stage into the weekend.
Associated press FORT WORTH, Texas — Residents of some rural southeastern Texas counties were bracing for more flooding Tuesday along a river that had reached a record-high crest just two years after it had run dry in places because of drought.
National Weather Service meteorologists predicted that the Brazos River would crest at 53.5 feet by midday Tuesday in Fort Bend County, which is just southwest of Houston and home to many suburbs. That would eclipse the previous record by three feet and exceed levels reached in 1994, when extensive flooding caused major damage.
Aerial photos taken Sunday showed large swaths of Fort Bend County under water, and about 1,000 people had been evacuated from their homes there as of Tuesday morning, the Houston Chronicle reported. The skies were clear in the region on Tuesday, but an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain expected later this week could keep the Brazos in major flood stage into the weekend.
During four days of torrential rain last week, six people died in floods along the Brazos, which runs from New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico. A Brazos River Authority map showed that all 11 of the reservoirs fed by the Brazos were at 95 to 100 percent capacity.
Four of the six dead were recovered in Washington County, which is between Austin and Houston, County Judge John Brieden said Monday. Lake Somerville, one of the Brazos reservoirs, was “gushing uncontrollably” over the spillway and threatening people downriver, he said.
About 40 people were rescued Sunday and Monday from low-lying homes in a flooded neighborhood of Simonton, a Fort Bend County community of about 800 residents. The county had set up a pumping system to divert the water from the neighborhood, but it was overpowered by the flooding, county spokeswoman Beth Wolf said Monday.
Wolf said any additional rain in southeastern Texas would be a problem.
“The ditches are full, the river’s high, there’s nowhere else for that water to go,” she said.
In the Fort Bend County city of Rosenberg, about 150 households had been evacuated by Monday, and city officials were coordinating with the county’s office of emergency management to have rescue boats in place, city spokeswoman Jenny Pavlovich said Monday. In neighboring Richmond, a voluntary evacuation order was in place.
Scott Overpeck, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Tuesday that the Brazos will recede in the coming days but that its levels will remain high for up to three weeks, in part because water will need to be released from the swollen reservoirs upriver.
“There’s so much water on the Brazos that it’s going to take a long time to drain through the whole river and drain out into the Gulf of Mexico,” Overpeck said.
Elsewhere, authorities continued searching for the body of an 11-year-old boy who fell into a creek in Wichita, Kansas, and is presumed dead. Relatives have identified the boy as Devon Dean Cooley, who disappeared Friday night.
Devon’s family, in a statement Monday, thanked firefighters for their tireless efforts to find the boy. The family held a cookout Monday evening to feed the rescue crews, followed by a candlelight vigil.
Lost Year in Nigeria Under Buhari Leaves Economy on Knees
This year, Nigeria’s local-bond yields have climbed 276 basis points to 13.46 percent, leaving them as the only such securities among 31 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg to make losses. Electricity output has plunged to about a 30th of that of South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy, as attacks on pipelines cut supplies of natural gas to power plants.
Muhammadu Buhari took office as Nigeria’s president a year ago on a wave of optimism that the ex-military ruler could revive a nation battered by falling oil prices and decades of corruption. Now, Africa’s biggest economy is on its knees, forcing Buhari to throw in the towel on a central pillar of his economic policy — a currency peg.
“It was difficult to imagine a scenario in which things got worse,” said Malte Liewerscheidt, a Nigeria analyst at Bath, U.K.-based consultant Verisk Maplecroft. “But it’s been a lost year. What’s missing is sound macroeconomic policies.”
Nigeria will soon enter a recession, according to the central bank, and an upsurge of militant attacks since February has sent crude production, which usually accounts for 70 percent of government revenue, plummeting to an almost 30-year low. Delays in approving a budget and a cabinet as well as Buhari’s refusal to weaken an overvalued currency — until he hinted at relenting last week — have caused foreign investors to flee.
Foreign investors, fearing a devaluation, are staying away. Foreign direct investment was the lowest last year since the 2007-08 global financial crisis, and Citigroup Inc. said deals have ground to a halt. Capital controls prompted JPMorgan Chase & Co. in September to kick Nigeria out of its local-currency emerging-market bond indexes, tracked by more than $200 billion of funds.
Bond Losses
This year, Nigeria’s local-bond yields have climbed 276 basis points to 13.46 percent, leaving them as the only such securities among 31 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg to make losses. Electricity output has plunged to about a 30th of that of South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest economy, as attacks on pipelines cut supplies of natural gas to power plants.
When Buhari beat then-President Goodluck Jonathan in the first election victory by an opposition candidate, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration called it an “historic step for Nigeria and Africa.” A 73-year-old retired major-general who ruled from 1983 to 1985, Buhari campaigned to end the corruption he said was “killing” his country. He and his All Progressives Congress party promised to crush Boko Haram, whose Islamist insurgency has led to thousands of deaths in the northeast since 2009, and boost economic growth to as much as 10 percent.
Naira Peg
Now recession looms. The economy contracted in the first quarter by 0.4 percent, the first decline since 2004. If Buhari doesn’t alter his stance on the naira and loosen the restrictions used to defend its peg to the dollar, output will probably sink further, according to Mark Bohlund, an Africa economist with Bloomberg Intelligence in London.
“The Nigerian economy is at high risk of experiencing its first full-year recession since 1987,” Bohlund said. An improvement next year depends on security being restored in the oil-rich Niger River delta region and “a shift toward more market-based economic policy.”
Buhari was dealt a tough hand. He inherited a virtually empty treasury and Jonathan’s administration did little to diversify the economy, leaving it vulnerable to the crash in oil prices since 2014. A rainy-day fund known as the Excess Crude Account was whittled down to barely $2 billion when Buhari took office, from $21 billion in 2008.
Boko Haram
The president has won plaudits from investors for beating back Boko Haram and trying to overhaul graft-ridden institutions, including the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., the management of which he sacked. Yet they have been left bemused by his economic policies.
He opted to keep gasoline prices capped at 87 naira ($0.44) a liter ($1.76 a gallon) until months of shortages and unrest over long fuel lines forced him to increase them by 67 percent in mid-May. He has also clung to the naira peg even as evidence showed a dollar shortage was strangling the economy. Buhari continues to oppose devaluation, though he has given the central bank leeway to implement a more flexible currency regime, his spokesman, Garba Shehu, said on Monday.
Under Governor Godwin Emefiele, the central bank began to fix the naira at 197-199 against the dollar in late February 2015, even as other oil exporters from Russia to Colombia and Kazakhstan let their currencies drop. Buhari has backed that stance since coming to power.
Businesses are struggling to operate as the central bank, whose reserves have fallen to a more than 10-year low, runs out of the dollars they need to import raw materials and equipment. Many are forced to turn to the black market, where the naira’s value has plunged to around 350 per dollar. That’s pushed the inflation rate to 13.7 percent, the highest in almost six years.
Currency Squeeze
U.S. carrier United Airlines said would it stop flying to Nigeria next month, in part because of the hard-currency squeeze, and British Airways said it may follow suit. Foreign airlines have the naira-equivalent of $575 million trapped in the country that they can’t repatriate, according to the International Air Traffic Association. The Africa president of Unilever, whose Nigerian unit has seen its shares drop 29 percent since Buhari became president, called the currency policy “very insane.”
The central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee voted on May 24 to allow “greater flexibility” in the foreign-exchange market, which investors hoped meant that banks would be allowed to trade the naira more freely. Yet, while Emefiele said a new system would be unveiled “in the coming days,” no changes have been made.
Policy Failure
It was an “admission of the inevitable failure of the policy, which created a black market economy,” said Kingsley Moghalu, a former deputy governor at the central bank who now teaches at Tufts University in Boston. “The exchange-rate policy contributed quite significantly to creating a recessionary situation. It hit manufacturers, who could not access forex. It has created unemployment.”
The economy is so weak that Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun says officials probably won’t be able to collect enough taxes to meet the revenue target in this year’s record 6.1 trillion naira budget, which was only passed this month after senators said Buhari’s team made mistakes in the first version sent to them.
Nigeria’s 36 states, most of which depend on monthly handouts from the federal government, are on average three to four months late with salary payments to teachers, doctors and other civil servants, according to the oil minister.
“There’s a sense of exasperation among investors,” said Ronak Gopaldas, a Johannesburg-based analyst at Rand Merchant Bank. “There’s still a level of goodwill toward Buhari and his government, but it’s dissipating. The man on the street is really struggling.”
The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), which has carried out a series of crippling attacks on oil pipelines and facilities in the region, issued a statement on Monday warning companies based in the region—including Dutch giants Shell and U.S. firm Chevron—that “it’s going to be bloody this time around.” “Your facilities and personnel will bear the brunt of our fury, which shall fall upon you like a whirling wind,” said the statement, attributed to NDA spokesman Mudoch Agbinibo.
Buhari is planning to visit Ogoniland, a region in the Niger Delta damaged by years of oil spills, on Thursday to launch a clean-up program, an unnamed Nigerian official told Reuters. A spokesman for the president confirmed to Newsweek that the visit is going ahead without providing further details. It will be the first time Buhari has been to the Niger Delta since his inauguration in May 2015.
The NDA came to Nigeria’s attention in February after it claimed an attack on an underwater pipeline at Shell’s Forcados terminal in the Niger Delta—which produces 250,000 barrels per day (bpd)—temporarily taking the facility offline. The group has stated its aim is to cripple the Nigerian economy and appears to have links to the pro-Biafra movement, which wants to establish an independent state of Biafra in southeast Nigeria. Biafra existed as a republic between 1967 and 1970, when it was reintegrated into Nigeria following a bloody civil war. The NDA has frequently called for the release of pro-Biafra activist Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, who has been detained by Nigerian security forces since October 2015 on charges of treasonable felony, which he denies
Mainly as a result of the upsurge in attacks, Nigeria’s oil production has decreased by 800,000 bpd to around 1.4 million bpd, dropping the West African country behind Angola as the continent’s largest oil producer.
Houston teacher admits she had abortion after having sex with middle-schooler for months
Houston police are searching for a middle school teacher who they say had sex with a former student for months, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Alexandria Vera, a 24-year-old English teacher at Stovall Middle School, has been charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, the Chronicle reported.
According to the documents, Vera told Aldine ISD police she met the student at summer school in 2015. The student asked for her Instagram name, which she refused to provide. He later found her, and she rejected the request.
When school resumed in the fall, Vera said the boy flirted with her and made inappropriate comments. The student eventually asked if they could hang out and she agreed, the documents state.
Vera told police when she picked up the boy, they kissed in the car and later had sex at his parents’ house. She met the boy’s parents at a school open house in October and went over to the boy’s house where she was introduced as his g
irlfriend to the parents, who were accepting of the relationship, according to the documents.
Documents state the sexual encounters continued on an almost daily basis. Vera told police the boy often spend the night at her house and she’d drive him home in the morning so he could catch the bus.
She told police that she became pregnant in January and that the family was supportive and excited about the baby, documents state.
She said she had an abortion after Child Protective Services showed up at the school in February to ask about her relationship with the boy. She said she denied the pregnancy and the relationship to CPS, documents state.
A forensic analysis of Vera’s phone, which she provided to officials, showed messages between the two that were consistent with what Vera told police.
In a statement from Aldine ISD provided to the Chronicle, district officials said Vera was immediately removed from the school in April after allegations were made and placed on administrative leave
“Aldine ISD Police investigated the incident and turned their findings over to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office,” the statement reads. “The safety and security of Aldine ISD’s students and staff remains a priority of the school district. Houston Police are still searching for Vera.”
Stovall Middle School was in the news in 2014 after a teacher was accused of giving a student a lap dance on his birthday. She was given probation.
Nigerian Military Launch Offensive in Oil-Producing South
Soldiers are demanding that villagers hand over fighters of the Avengers, and its alleged leader Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo, said Chief Macaulay. Tompolo has denied involvement with the Avengers but the attacks began shortly after an arrest warrant was issued for his alleged theft and subversion of money from government contracts to guard oil installations.
AP- Nigerian security forces have killed and injured an unknown number of people in an offensive in the oil-producing south where militant attacks have halved petroleum production, residents and the military said Monday.
In a separate attack, members of the Indigenous People of Biafra group said police Monday fatally killed at least 15 people in an attack on a peaceful rally in Onitsha city to commemorate heroes of the 1967-1970 civil war to create a separate state of Biafra in southeast Nigeria.
Police denied that, with Deputy Superintendent Alphonsus Okechukwu saying nobody was killed because security agents never used live ammunition to disperse the crowd.
In the southern Niger Delta, soldiers encountered three speedboats believed to be carrying militants on a mission to attack an oil installation on Sunday and “opened fire on them, killing most of them and injuring others,” said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman.
In a separate attack, members of the Indigenous People of Biafra group said police Monday fatally killed at least 15 people in an attack on a peaceful rally in Onitsha city to commemorate heroes of the 1967-1970 civil war to create a separate state of Biafra in southeast Nigeria.
Earlier Sunday, militants in two other speedboats opened fire on soldiers from an artillery regiment who responded with “overwhelming superior firepower” that injured an unknown number, he said.
In another attack, on Saturday night, soldiers fired on a speedboat trying to reach Oporoza to evacuate civilians wounded in the military’s siege of that town, according to the Ijaw Youth Council, a community group.
The military’s offensive comes after the Niger Delta Avengers, a new group, mounted three attacks in three days last week and warned of “something big” to come.
Community chieftain Elekute Macaulay said troops arrived at Oporoza before dawn Saturday and were reinforced early Monday to widen a siege of the area reachable only by water or air. He said half the 40,000 inhabitants have fled to the bush and creeks, and the others are afraid to come out of their homes.
The Ijaw council said it “strongly condemns this … brutalization of innocent residents.”
Soldiers are demanding that villagers hand over fighters of the Avengers, and its alleged leader Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo, said Chief Macaulay. Tompolo has denied involvement with the Avengers but the attacks began shortly after an arrest warrant was issued for his alleged theft and subversion of money from government contracts to guard oil installations.
Oil militants are angry that the government is winding down a 2009 amnesty program that paid 30,000 militants to guard the installations they once attacked. They are demanding a bigger share of Nigeria’s oil wealth for residents of the Niger Delta, where hundreds of thousands of livelihoods have been destroyed by decades of oil pollution.
Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolves parliament, names caretaker prime minister
Jordan’s King Abdullah II appointed veteran politician Hani Mulki as caretaker prime minister Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end and charged him with organizing elections by October.
AMMAN, Jordan — Jordan’s King Abdullah II appointed veteran politician Hani Mulki as caretaker prime minister Sunday after dissolving parliament as its four-year term nears its end and charged him with organizing elections by October.
The king accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour before appointing Mulki by royal decree. Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations. Under the constitution, the election must be held within four months.
“The kingdom faces grave economic difficulties due to the volatile situation in this region, which has had an adverse impact on growth levels,” Abdullah said in a letter appointing Mulki. “Therefore we have to take exceptional and innovative measures that help us overcome these challenges and obstacles.”
Jordan is struggling to cope with at least 1.2 million Syrian refugees who have fled the conflict in their country.
Mulki has held senior government posts in successive administrations. Under the constitution, the election must be held within four months.
The king also told Mulki that he hoped the election would pave the way for a prime minister emerging from a parliamentary majority rather than one handpicked by the monarch, a main plank of the reformist agenda of a mix of Islamist and tribal figures.
Jordan traditionally votes according to tribal and family allegiances, but parliament amended the electoral laws in March in a move that analysts say will lead to more candidates from political parties vying for votes.
The analysts say the tribal lawmakers who dominated the last parliament had tried to resist changes that might undermine their influence, under a system that still favors sparsely populated tribal areas.
Jordan’s main political opposition comes from the Muslim Brotherhood movement, but it faces increasing legal curbs on its activities, leaving mostly pro-monarchy parties and some independent Islamists and politicians to compete in these elections, analysts say.
The Brotherhood wants sweeping political reforms but stops short of demanding the overthrow of the monarchy.
Its political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, represents many disenfranchised Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who are in the majority in the population of 7 million and live mostly in urban areas.
Analysts say it could be difficult for the Brotherhood, which has operated legally in Jordan for decades, to participate in the election after authorities closed many of its offices and encouraged a splinter group to legally challenge the main movement’s license to operate.
Western diplomats and independent politicians say the absence of the group, which has strong grass-roots support in urban centers, could undermine the legitimacy of the election.
Western donors have pushed Jordan’s authorities to widen political representation to stem radicalization among alienated and unemployed young people. Hundreds of them have joined extremists in Syria and Iraq.
Men In Pakistan Encouraged To “Lightly Beat” Their Wives
A constitutional body in Pakistan put forth legislation that would allow men to “lightly beat” their wives if they refuse sex or decline to wear outfits preferred by their husbands, reports NBC News.
The Council of Islamic Ideology, also known as CII, proposed the legislation last week and it’s already sparked anger in Pakistan. The 160-page draft has to be finalized before it’s sent off for approval, because the CII cannot make laws. Instead, it gives suggestions to Pakistan’s government and parliament.
“Hit her in areas where her skin is not too thick and not too thin,” CII leader Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani told the press. “Do not use shoes or a broom on the head, or hit her on the nose or eyes.”
In addition to suggesting that men beat their wives for refusing sex, the proposal also suggests that men use “limited violence” on their wives if they don’t bathe after intercourse or during menstruation.
“Hit her in areas where her skin is not too thick and not too thin,” CII leader Maulana Muhammad Khan Sherani told the press. “Do not use shoes or a broom on the head, or hit her on the nose or eyes.”
He added, “Do not break any bones or cut her skin or leave any marks. Do not hit her vindictively, but only for reminding her about her religious duties.”
According to NBC News, the proposal includes step-by-step guidelines on how men are to beat their wives. The document does suggest that violence be used only as a last resort for a wife’s disobedience. The CII suggests that any man who doesn’t follow the processes should be prosecuted.
Experts say that the CII’s proposal is a response to a progressive gender-equality law called the Protection of Woman Against Violence Act, which the CII called “un-Islamic.”
Chad ex-dictator found guilty, sentence to life for abuses
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Chad’s former dictator Hissene Habre was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for abuses during his time in power, Judge Gberdao Gustave Kam said Monday at the end of the trial that began in July 2015.
Cheers, whoops of joy and tears greeted the judge’s ruling from scores of Habre’s former prisoners who hugged each other in the courtroom.
Habre’s trial by the Extraordinary African Chambers in the Senegalese courts began in July last year. It is the first trial in which the courts of one country are prosecuting the former ruler of another for alleged human rights crimes. More than 90 witnesses testified.
Habre was convicted of being responsible for thousands of deaths and tortures in prisons during his rule from 1982 to 1990. A 1992 Chadian Truth Commission accused Habre’s government of systematic torture, saying that 40,000 people died during his rule. It placed particular blame on his political police force.
The ex-dictator, who has lived in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, since fleeing Chad in 1990, has denounced his trial as being politically motivated. He and his supporters have disrupted proceedings several times with shouting and singing. He refused legal representation but the court appointed him Senegalese lawyers.
The trial of Habre was forged by many of those who had been jailed by Habre’s government and who have campaigned for his prosecution for more than 15 years.
“This case was not started by a prosecutor in the Hague, or by the Security Council. The architects, the visionaries of this case, are the Chadian victims themselves and their supporters,” said Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch who has been working on the case since 2000. The work by the survivors to bring Habre to justice influenced all aspects of the trial including the way the charges were framed, he said.
Habre was first indicted by a Senegalese judge in 2000, but legal twists and turns over a decade saw the case go to Belgium and then finally back to Senegal after unwavering pursuit by the survivors.
In 2001, the police force’s archives were discovered on the floor of its headquarters in Chad, records which went back to Habre’s rule and mention more than 12,000 victims of Chad’s detention network.
The extraordinary court was formed by Senegal and the African Union to try Habre for the crimes that took place during his rule.
A second set of hearings on damages for the more than 4,000 registered civil parties will take place in the coming days. The defense has about 15 days to appeal. If they do, an appeals court must be set up.
Hurray – Iraq forces push into streets of IS-held Fallujah
Baghdad (AFP) – Iraqi forces thrust into the city of Fallujah from three directions on Monday marking a new and perilous urban phase in the week-old operation to retake the jihadist bastion.
The drive to recapture the first city to be lost from government control in 2014 came as fighting also raged in neighbouring Syria, leaving huge numbers of civilians exposed.
Led by the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS), Iraq’s best trained and most seasoned fighting unit, the forces pushed into Fallujah before dawn, commanders said.
“Iraqi forces entered Fallujah under air cover from the international coalition, the Iraqi air force and army aviation, and supported by artillery and tanks,” said Lieutenant General Abdelwahab al-Saadi, the commander of the operation.
“There is resistance from Daesh,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for IS.
The forces have not yet ventured into the city centre but they recaptured some areas in a southern suburb after crossing a bridge, and took up positions on the eastern and northern fringes.
The involvement of the elite CTS marks the start of a phase of urban combat in a city where in 2004 US forces fought some of their toughest battles since the Vietnam War.
The week-old operation had previously focused on retaking rural areas around Fallujah, which lies just 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad.
It had been led by the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, which is dominated by Tehran-backed Shiite militias.
They were still in action Monday, attempting to clear an area northwest of Fallujah called Saqlawiya, officers said.
– Civilians trapped inside –
Only a few hundred families have managed to slip out of the Fallujah area ahead of the assault on the city, with an estimated 50,000 civilians still trapped inside, sparking fears the jihadists could try to use them as human shields.
The only families who were able to flee so far lived in outlying areas, with the biggest wave of displaced reaching camps on Saturday night.
“Our resources in the camps are now very strained and with many more expected to flee we might not be able to provide enough drinking water for everyone,” said Nasr Muflahi, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Iraq director.
“We expect bigger waves of displacement the fiercer the fighting gets.”
In Amriyat al-Fallujah, a government-controlled town to the south of the jihadist stronghold, civilians trickled in, starving and exhausted after walking through the countryside for hours at night, dodging IS surveillance.
“I just decided to risk everything. I was either going to save my children or die with my children,” said Ahmad Sabih, 40, who reached the NRC-run camp early on Sunday.
A senior police commander said his forces had assisted 800 civilians fleeing areas north of Fallujah on Monday.
Fallujah is one of just two major urban centres in Iraq still held by IS jihadists.
They also hold Mosul, the country’s second city and de-facto jihadist capital in Iraq, east of which Kurdish-led forces launched a fresh offensive on Sunday.
The jihadists holed up in Fallujah are believed to number around 1,000.
– Syria’s Aleppo bombarded –
It is not yet clear what resources IS is prepared to invest in the defence of Fallujah, which has been almost completely isolated for months, but the city looms large in modern jihadist mythology.
Fallujah is expected to give Iraqi forces one of their toughest battles yet but IS has appeared weakened in recent months and has been losing territory consistently in the past 12 months.
According to the government, the organisation that has sewn havoc across Iraq and Syria over the past two years now controls around 14 percent of the national territory, down from 40 percent in 2014.
However, as the “caliphate” it declared two years ago unravels, IS has been reverting to its old tactics of bombings against civilians and commando raids.
A fresh wave of bomb attacks claimed by IS struck the Baghdad area on Monday, killing 11 people in three separate blasts.
In northern Syria, clashes raged around the flashpoint town of Marea as IS pressed an assault on non-jihadist rebels.
The IS onslaught has threatened tens of thousands of people, many of them already displaced from other areas, who have sought refuge in camps near the Turkish border.
Gerry Simpson, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told AFP 165,000 civilians were now stuck between IS fighters, Kurdish forces and the border.
“What more does the US, EU and UN need to call on Turkey to give these people refuge,” he asked.
In divided Aleppo city, 15 people, including two children, were killed in the rebel-controlled eastern neighbourhoods in heavy bombardment on Monday morning, the civil defence said.
World Uganda angered at claim of halt to N.Korea military ties
Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, has visited North Korea three times and met Kim Il-Sung, the country’s late founding president and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-Un.
Kampala (AFP) – Uganda hit back Sunday at South Korea’s claim that Kampala had ordered a halt to military ties with North Korea in line with UN sanctions, denying it had made such an announcement.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye’s spokesman had earlier Sunday told reporters that Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni had ordered officials to honour the latest sanctions during a summit in Kampala.
Spokesman Jung Yeon-Guk quoted Museveni as saying: “We instructed officials to faithfully enforce the UN Security Council resolutions, including the halt of cooperation with North Korea in the security, military and police sectors.”
But Ugandan authorities responded swiftly, saying there had been no “public declaration” to this effect.
“That is not true. It is propaganda,” deputy government spokesman Shaban Bantariza told AFP.
“Even if (such an order) was to be made by the president, it cannot be public. It cannot be therefore true and it can’t happen. That is international politics at play,” he added.
Dozens of North Korean military and police officials are believed to be working in Uganda as military trainers under a cooperation programme.
Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, has visited North Korea three times and met Kim Il-Sung, the country’s late founding president and grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-Un.
The UN Security Council in March imposed the toughest sanctions to date on Pyongyang following its fourth atomic test in January and a long-range rocket launch a month later.
The rocket launch — widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test — was staged in violation of existing UN resolutions that ban the country from any use of ballistic missile technology.
Kim Jong-Un however remained defiant in the face of growing international pressure, declaring his country a “responsible” nuclear weapons state at a recent meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party.
The young leader also defended North Korea’s widely-condemned nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against “hostile” US policy against his regime.
On her first state visit to Uganda, South Korea’s Park discussed ways to strengthen bilateral ties, including offering more aid to Kampala and the offer of running join development projects.
