Laws fail victims of forced, early marriage in “chauvinistic” Burkina Faso – Amnesty

huts — Huts in the village of Bagare, Passore province, northern Burkina Faso, March 30, 2016. REUTERS/Zoe Tabary

By Kieran Guilbert | Thomson Reuters Foundation

DAKAR, April 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Burkina Faso’s marriage laws are failing girls who are forced into early marriage by their families and threatened, abused and beaten by their partners for seeking contraception, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Forced marriage is illegal in the West African nation, but the law applies only to state-registered marriages, rather than the religious and traditional ceremonies which account for most of Burkina Faso’s forced and early marriages, Amnesty said.

The law also states that a girl must be aged 17 or above to marry, yet half of girls aged 15 to 17 in the northern Sahel region are married, the rights group said in a report.

“Current legislation in Burkina Faso has critical gaps… leaving many women and girls unprotected and unsupported,” the report said.

Burkina Faso has the sixth highest rate of early marriage in Africa, with one in 10 girls married by the age of 15 and more than half married by 18, according to the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.

Families often marry off girls to improve family alliances and social status, or in return for goods, money and services.

Some areas of Burkina Faso also have the practice of ‘Pog-lenga’ or ‘bonus woman’, where a bride brings her niece to the husband’s family as an extra girl to be married, Amnesty said.

“I did not want to marry the man (her aunt’s husband). My aunt told me ‘if you flee, we will destroy you’,” Amnesty quoted 15-year-old Celine as saying, one of 379 women and girls interviewed by the human rights group.

While the government and donors subsidise the cost of contraception, many married women and girls still struggle to buy it as they cannot afford it, do not have control of their income and are prevented by their partners, Amnesty said.

Fewer than one in six women and girls in Burkina Faso use contraception, dramatically increasing the risk of unwanted and sometimes high-risk pregnancies, according to Amnesty.

At least 2,800 women in Burkina Faso die in childbirth every year, a figure that could be reduced by one-third with better access to birth control, the report said.

“There is a male chauvinistic culture which says: ‘I will decide in the place of the woman’,” Gaetan Mooto, West Africa researcher at Amnesty, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Even when women have the money for contraception, they don’t have the control over their own bodies,” Mooto added.

The government of Burkina Faso was not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

President Obama Adding US Troops in Syria to Keep Up ‘Momentum’ Against ISIS

President Obama says he is expanding the U.S. military presence in Syria in order to keep up the “momentum” in the campaign against ISIS.

“I’ve decided to increase U.S. support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria,” the president said today in a speech in Hanover, Germany, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State. “They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back.”

The president will deploy an additional 250 Special Operations Forces to Syria to assist local forces in their fight against ISIS. This adds to the 50 personnel aiding fighters in Syria, bringing the total number of US troops in the country to 300.
Obama to Send 250 Additional Military Personnel to Syria, Official Says

Obama encouraged his NATO counterparts to step up their counter-ISIS efforts, including increasing the air campaign in Syria and Iraq, providing trainers to help build up local forces in Iraq and providing greater economic assistance to Iraq.

“These terrorists are doing everything in their power to strike our cities and kill our citizens so we need to do everything in our power to stop them,” he said.

Before the speech, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes stressed that while the troops will be in “harm’s way,” they are not being tasked with a combat mission.

“Obviously, any special forces troops that we deploy into Iraq or Syria are going to be combat-equipped troops. They may be in circumstances where they find themselves in harm’s way because these are dangerous places,” Rhodes told reporters today. “They’re not being sent there on a combat mission. They’re being sent there on a mission to be advising and assisting and supporting the forces that are fighting against ISIL on the ground.”

The United States is also ramping up its military presence in neighboring Iraq. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced last week the deployment of an additional 217 troops to serve as advisers in Iraq, raising the total number of authorized military forces to 4,087.

The president’s decision comes before a security-focused meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Hollande, and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Rhodes said the president will encourage his European counterparts, both publicly and privately, to expand their commitment to fight ISIS.

“Everybody is in this fight,” Rhodes said. “We will do our part, but this will only succeed if we are working together as a coalition and as a global community to stamp out the threat of ISIL.”

The leaders will also discuss other global security concerns, including the refugee crisis, assisting a new government in Libya, and maintaining pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been at odds with Western leaders over aggression in Ukraine and support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

President Obama will urge European leaders to expand intelligence sharing as ISIS continues to pose a threat to their countries in the wake of the attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Japan just build a stealth fighter jet?

Japan’s first stealth fighter jet, a prototype called the X-2, took its maiden flight on Friday.

The development of a stealth fighter jet – capable of evading radar detection – is indicative of Japan’s concern over China’s regional military buildup. It’s also a sign that Japan is willing to move beyond its pacifist past and chart a defense independent of its closest military ally, the US.

The X-2 was built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and “integrates an airframe, engines, and other advanced systems and equipment all adaptable to future fighters,” according to Mitsubishi.

According to the test pilot, the X-2’s inaugueral flight went well, and followed a stimulated training flight pattern. The X-2, painted red and white, took off from the Nagoya airport and landed at the Japan Air Self-Defense Force Gifu base.

Although the X-2 has been in development for over a decade, its first test flight this spring is certainly timely, as tensions escalate between Japan and near neighbor China over the situation in the East and South China Sea.

Recently, the Japanese government approved a $44 billion dollar defense budget, the fourth straight year of budget increases in a row.

The budget increase was approved alongside legislation that would make it possible for Japanese troops to fight in other countries for the first time since World War II.

“The security environment surrounding our country is increasingly severe,” said Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe to reporters after the 2016 budget was approved. “In a world where no one nation can protect themselves by themselves alone, this legislation will help prevent wars.”

Despite these recent changes, however, Japan says its soldiers may fight abroad only if the safety of both Japan and its allies are threatened.

In light of Japan’s constitutional pacifism, its decision to create a prototype stealth fighter, making it just one of four nations to have radar-evading aircraft, may seem strange.

Yet the creation of the X-2 may be indicative that Japan knows which way the wind is blowing.

In 2015, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force had to “scramble” 571 times to respond to Chinese incursions on its air space, a 23 percent increase from 464 times the previous year.

Japan is also concerned about increasing Chinese activity in the South and East China Sea. Japan, the US, and other Asian nations are concerned about the Chinese island building and its military build up, including missile placement, in the South China Sea.

And Japan also has its own specific territorial conflict with China, over the Senkaku/Daioyu Islands in the East China Sea that similarly escalates tensions between the two countries.

With these regional stressors in mind, the Japanese creation of the X-2 prototype could be a deterrence move, as the stealth jet was built to help Japan test how to create a production model stealth fighter for the future.

Japan’s current Air Self-Defense force fleet comprises 190 elderly F-15J fighters. Given the Chinese air and island incursions in the last two years alone, Japan argues it needs to upgrade its air force.

Although Tokyo tried to buy F-22 Raptors – all-weather stealth tactical fighters – from the United States, but the US Congress has banned the export F-22 technology. So, Japan is moving forward to produce its own stealth jets – and perhaps a new export of its own.

The production model of the X-2 is expected to be named the F-3, though nobody knows yet what it will look like. The Japanese Air Self-Defense force says it plans to continue tests on the X-2 until 2018.

The full production version of the F-3 may not be seen by the public until 2030.

South Africa’s Julius Malema warns Zuma government

1067c214a6c6c28ff0c9e54dde61098f — Malema is the commander-in-chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, an opposition party he founded in 2013 after being expelled from the ANC, where he had served as president of the Youth League.

South African politician Julius Malema says the opposition “will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun” if the ruling African National Congress (ANC) continues to respond violently to peaceful protests.

Malema is the commander-in-chief of the Economic Freedom Fighters, an opposition party he founded in 2013 after being expelled from the ANC, where he had served as president of the Youth League.

The exchange, in Sunday’s episode of Talk To Al Jazeera, began when Jonah Hull asked Malema how far he was willing to go in his “war” against President Jacob Zuma and reminded him of his 2014 threat to make the entire Gauteng province ungovernable.

“We have the capability to mobilise our people and fight physically,” said Malema.

“That’s not befitting of a government in waiting, is it?” Hull asked.

“We know for a fact that Gauteng ANC rigged elections here,” replied Malema.

“We know for a fact that they lost Johannesburg and they lost Gauteng. But we still accepted it. But they must know that we are not going to do that this year. We are not going to accept.

“Part of the revolutionary duty is to fight and we are not ashamed if the need arises for us to take up arms and fight. We will fight. This regime must respond peacefully to our demands and must respond constitutionally to our demands.

“And if they are going to respond violently – like they did in the township of Alexandra, just outside Johannesburg, when people said these results do not reflect the outcome of our votes, they sent the army to go and intimidate our people. We are not going to stand back. Zuma is not going to use the army to intimidate us. We are not scared of the army. We are not scared to fight. We will fight.”

Hull asked Malema to clarify this: “When you say you are willing to take up arms, that’s what you mean?”

“Literally,” Malema said.

“Against the government?” Hull asked.

“Yeah, literally. I mean it literally. We are not scared. We are not going to have a government that disrespects us,” Malema said

“We are a very peaceful organisation and we fight our battles through peaceful means, through the courts, through parliament, through mass moblisation.

“We do that peacefully. But at times, government gets tempted to respond to such with violence. They beat us up in parliament and they send soliders to places like Alexandra where people are protesting. We will run out of patience very soon and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun.”

Earlier, Malema had denied that Zuma was his primary concern.

“We are not waged in a war against Zuma and the ANC. We are waging a war against white monopoly capital. Zuma is not our enemy. The ANC is not our enemy. They are standing in our way to crushing white monopoly capital, which has stolen our land, which controls the wealth of our country. “As we are in the process of crushing the white monopoly capital, there will be some of those irritations that we have to deal with. Zuma represents such an irritation; the ANC represents such an irritation.”

South Africa is holding municipal elections in August.

More details are emerging about how a high-school basketball star who is accused of being 29 years old was caught

Nicola told the Star in the January feature story that he arrived in Windsor on Nov. 22, 2015, just three days before his 17th birthday. He said he left South Sudan, his disease-ridden, wartorn home, for a better life in Windsor.

In a bizarre story on Thursday, the Windsor Star reported that Jonathon Nicola, a Canadian high-school basketball star, may actually be 29 years old.

Nicola, who is from South Sudan, and was recruited to play basketball in Canada, was living with his Catholic Central coach Pete Cusumano under the guise of being a 17-year-old. There might be other reasons behind the detention of Nicola — who is currently in custody, awaiting another hearing — away.

The Canada Border Service Agency, who arrested Nicola, told Yahoo in a statement:

Mr. Nicola submitted an application for a Canadian study permit abroad with a date of birth of November 25, 1998. When he recently applied for a U.S. visitor visa, it was determined by fingerprint match, that he was the same individual who had made a previous application to the U.S. using a date of birth of November 1, 1986.

According to Eisenberg, Nicola was recruited to Canada by Deng D’Awole, a former American Basketball Association player who now works in his native South Sudan teaching basketball. D’Awol told his friend Greg Dole, a former high-school teammate, that Nicola was the best player he had seen in eastern Africa, calling him the next Kevin Durant.

What remains unclear is if anybody at Catholic Central knew Nicola’s real age. According to Eisenberg, Nicola’s mother had told D’Awol that Nicola was only 17. Cusumano hasn’t commented on the situation.

On Wednesday night, as noted by Eisenberg, Catholic Central point guard Richie Akinsanya tweeted in support of Nicola, saying, “If you were in a war torn country and were given an opportunity to get out, you’d take it in a heartbeat too.”

Massey coach Keith McShan, who coached against Nicola, told Yahoo, “At first I was shocked, but now I just feel sorry for the man. He had to fake being 17 to leave his war-torn country and come to Canada. I felt sorry for him that he had to go to that extent.”

Nigeria: Army Guilty of ‘Mass Slaughter’ of Shiites, Says Amnesty

pakistani-shiite-muslims-carry-sheikh-zakzaky-placard — Pakistani Shiite Muslims carry posters of Ibrahim Zakzaky in a protest against the killing of Shiites in Pakistan and Nigeria, Lahore, December 18, 2015. Zakzaky remains in detention following clashes with the army in December. ARIF ALI/AFP/Getty Images

The Nigerian military committed “mass slaughter” and used “unlawful and excessive force” in clashes with members of a Shiite sect, according to Amnesty International.

Members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN)— led by Iranian-inspired cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky—clashed with Nigerian soldiers between December 12 and 14, 2015, in the northern Nigerian city of Zaria, Kaduna state. The Nigerian Army said the clashes began after IMN members attempted to assassinate the chief of army staff, while the IMN claims it was an unprovoked attack by the army.

More than 350 people are believed to have been unlawfully killed by the military in the clashes, according to Amnesty’s report, released on Friday and which is based on interviews with eyewitnesses.

Bodies of IMN members who had been killed were then dumped into mass graves, one of which Amnesty claims to have located via satellite image analysis. “Bodies were left littered in the streets and piled outside the mortuary. Some of the injured were burned alive,” said Netsanet Belay, Amnesty’s research and advocacy director for Africa.

The report was criticized by Nigerian defense spokesman Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar, however, who tells Newsweek that the document was “untimely” and “one-sided.” Abubakar says that the clashes are being investigated by a Kaduna state commission of inquiry and for Amnesty to draw conclusions before the inquiry concludes is “not fair.” “It’s not a true reflection of what the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and other security agencies stand for,” says Abubakar.

The secretary to the Kaduna State Government, Balarabe Lawal, recently told the commission of inquiry that at least 347 Shiites were killed and buried in a mass grave in the aftermath of the clashes. The IMN has previously claimed that more than 700 of their members remain missing following the violence. More than 250 are currently in custody and the Kaduna State Government presented a petition to the city’s high court on Thursday to sentence 50 IMN members to death for allegedly shooting dead a soldier during the clashes, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported.

Zakzaky was detained as a result of the clashes and remains in the custody of Nigeria’s intelligence agency, the State Security Service (DSS), according to Barrister Maxwell Kyon, one of the lawyers representing the Shiite leader. Kyon previously told Newsweek that Zakzaky’s legal team had only been allowed access to their client on one occasion during his four-month detention.

The IMN is the main Shiite sect in Nigeria, where the majority of the estimated 76 million Muslims are Sunni. The group has previously been targeted by militant jihadi group Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Shiite religious procession between Kano and Zaria in November 2015.

Border officials arrest 30-year-old African man who was attending Windsor high school as a teen

Trevor Wilhelm, (Windsor Star). Canadian border officers have arrested an African man, believed to be 30 years old, who spent the last six months attending Catholic Central High School while posing as a teenager.

Jonathon Nicola, who became a well-known high school basketball player, was being kept Wednesday at the South West Detention Centre.

The Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board is keeping tight-lipped about the situation.

“There’s really not a whole lot to say,” said spokesman Stephen Fields. “Because of the fact this is a matter that’s still outstanding before the federal authorities, obviously we can’t really comment on it. Beyond that there’s not a whole lot to say.”

The Canada Border Services Agency said Wednesday officers arrested Nicola for allegedly contravening the Immigration Refugee Protection Act. He is being detained under the authority of that act. The agency didn’t elaborate on what Nicola, who is in Canada on a student visa, is accused of doing.

sudanese1 — Catholic Central Comets Jonathan Nicola, centre, defends against Kennedy Clippers Omer Sulliman, left, in senior boys’ basketball action at Catholic Central on Jan. 5, 2016.

Nicola had a detention review Tuesday before the Immigration and Refugee Board, which decided he should remain in custody. There is another hearing scheduled for next week.

When asked if there was concern over the thought of a grown man posing as a teenager in one of the board’s schools, Fields said he wouldn’t comment specifically on the Nicola case.

“Generally I can tell you that we have a system of checks and balances in place that whenever international students are coming into any of our schools, we make sure that they have all of the necessary government documentation that they require in order to be in one of our schools,” said Fields.

He also wouldn’t discuss whether the board plans to alert students and parents about the situation.

“Again, generally speaking, if we felt at any time that there is any kind of threat to any of our students at any of our schools, then we would act appropriately,” said Fields.

Nicola, at six-foot-nine and 202 pounds with a shoe size of 16, had been attending Catholic Central as a 17-year-old Grade 11 student. He was also a star on the Catholic Central Comets senior boys’ basketball team.

He was even living with Comets head coach Pete Cusumano through a program called Canada Homestay, which finds homes for foreign students.

Cusumano said Wednesday he wasn’t allowed to talk about the situation.

But back in January, Cusumano told the Star in an interview for a feature story that Nicola was so good for a young ballplayer that he had a shot at going to the NBA.

Catholic Central Comets Jonathan Nicola, centre, during warm-ups with teammates Caleb Akinsanya, left, and Ramkel Wah on Jan. 5, 2016.

The group Windsor Hoops, which calls itself a “local basketball resource promoting news, players and results from Windsor,” even posted a “prospect video” that shows Nicola shooting hoops and running drills in the school gym.

Nicola told the Star in the January feature story that he arrived in Windsor on Nov. 22, 2015, just three days before his 17th birthday. He said he left South Sudan, his disease-ridden, war-torn home, for a better life in Windsor.

“A few of my friends know of my background, how we live over there,” he said in January. “I don’t know how many of them have a clue of how it is in Africa.”

Nicola said in January it took him six months to acquire a Canadian student visa. “With the war going on, terrorism and all this, they make it real double hard,” he said.

Legendary Artist Prince Found Dead at 57

Seth Abramovitch | The Hollywood Reporter/

Prince, a dizzylingly prolific multi-instrumentalist and virtuosic performer, was found dead at his home and recording studio in Minnesota early on Thursday, his publicist, Yvette Noel-Schure, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 57.

Deputies are on scene at Paisley Park in Chanhassen conducting a death investigation currently, authorities said. No further details were immediately available and the cause of death is not being released at this time.

The performer was born Prince Rogers Nelson June 7, 1958, in Minneapolis, Minn.

He released his debut album, For You, in 1978, followed by Prince (1979), Dirty Mind (1980) and Controversy (1981). All of them traded in his trademark sound – deep synth funk grooves with provocatively sexual lyrics and heart-piercing ballads sung in pure falsetto.

His mainstream breakthrough came with back-to-back albums with his backing band the Revolution: In 1982, 1999 launched several pop and dance floor hits onto the charts, including “Little Red Corvette” and the title song, a post-apocalyptic party anthem.

Two years later he released the album – a soundtrack, actually, to his movie-starring debut – that would launch him into the same superstar stratosphere of other 1980s pop titans like Michael Jackson and Madonna.

The soundtrack was 1984’s Purple Rain, a searing musical backdrop to a semi-autobiographical tale of “The Kid,” a Minneapolis rocker from an abusive family. The album launched five singles, two of which – “When Doves Cry” and Let’s Go Crazy” – went to Number 1 on the Billboard chart. The title ballad reached Number 2 and has gone on to become one of the most recognizable rock anthems in history. The soundtrack itself is frequently cited on music critics’ polls as being one of the best of all time, and Prince won an Oscar for original score in 1985.

Subsequent releases grew more experimental in nature, including the psychedelic Around the World in a Day (1985) and Sign “O” the Times (1987), a double-album recorded partly before a live audience in Paris that dispensed with the Revolution and which is widely considered to have been produced at Prince’s creative peak. (Among the compositions on it are “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” “If I was Your Girlfriend,” and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.”)

In between he starred in one more film, 1986’s Under the Cherry Moon, in which he played a gigolo wooing Kristin Scott Thomas in the south of France. The movie bombed, but produced a successful soundtrack album: Parade, which featured the hits “Kiss” and “Mountains.”

Throughout the 1990s, Prince was later backed by a large band known as The New Power Generation, and his sound moved away from synth and heavy rock guitars and into one of brassier R&B. In 1993, he famously changed his name to that of an unpronounceable glyph that melded the symbols for male and female.

The move was one of protest against his label, Warner Bros., leading him to shave the word “Slave” into his face at one point. Between 1994 and 1996 he churned out the five remaining records due on his contract and signed with Arista Records in 1998.

By the 2000s, the glyph was retired and he was once again referring to himself as Prince. In 2001, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness and moved to Los Angeles to “better understand the music industry.” In a 2008 interview with the New Yorker, he compared his religious conversion to “a realization … like Neo in The Matrix.”

In that same interview he grew uncharacteristically political, saying, “So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this.” (He gestured at a Bible.) “But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t.”

“And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right,” Prince said. The comments drew criticism from gay rights groups and fans, many of whom felt the musician had turned his back on them since the days of Controversy, when he toyed with ideas of gender and sexuality and sang on the title song, “Am I black or white, am I straight or gay?”

In the 15 years since, he’s released an astonishing 15 records and toured tirelessly. His latest tour, dubbed “Piano & a Microphone,” saw him criss-crossing the globe from Melbourne, Aus., to Oakland, Calif., cycling through an intimate, improvised evening of hits performed solo at a grand piano.

On the night he learned of his collaborator Vanity’s recent death, Prince told the crowd, “I just found out a little while ago that someone dear to us has passed away. So I’m going to dedicate this song to her.“

The song was: Little Red Corvette.”

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