News & Announcements

A son of Chad’s slain leader Idriss Deby Itno is to take over as president in place of his father, according to a charter released on Wednesday by the presidency.

It said General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, 37, who on Tuesday was named transitional leader as head of a military council following his father’s death, will “occupy the functions of the president of the republic” and also serve as head of the armed forces.

On Tuesday the army announced that Deby Sr died from wounds sustained in battle after three decades in power.

The shock news came only the day after the 68-year-old career military man was proclaimed the winner of a presidential election that had given him a sixth term in office.

The army also announced a curfew and border closures after the death, as well as the dissolution of government and the parliament

Deby had ruled Chad with an iron fist since taking power on the back of a coup in 1990 but was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the troubled Sahel region.

The army said Deby had been commanding his forces at the weekend as they battled rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day, April 11.

Deby “has just breathed his last breath defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield,” army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television.

US President Joe Biden has said the conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd “can be a giant step forward” for the nation in the fight against systemic racism. But he declared that “it’s not enough”.

“This can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice in America,” Biden said in remarks from the White House.

Biden spoke on Tuesday from the White House hours after the verdict alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, with the pair saying the country’s work is far from finished with the verdict.

“We can’t stop here,” Biden declared.

Biden and Harris called on Congress to act swiftly to address policing reform, including by approving a bill named after Floyd, who died with his neck under Chauvin’s knee last May. Beyond that, the president said, the entire country must confront hatred to “change hearts and minds as well as laws and policies”.

“‘I can’t breathe.’ Those were George Floyd’s last words,” Biden said. “We can’t let those words die with him. We have to keep hearing those words. We must not turn away. We can’t turn away.”

Harris, the first Black woman to serve as vice president, said racism was keeping the country from fulfilling its founding promise of “liberty and justice for all”.

“It is not just a Black America problem or a people of colour problem. it is a problem for every American,” she said. “It is holding our nation back from reaching our full potential.”

“A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice,” she said.

Biden addressed the nation after telephoning Floyd’s family following the verdict, telling them:“We’re all so relieved.” He added later that he sought to comfort Floyd’s young daughter Gianna, telling her: “Daddy did change the world.”

After about 10 hours of deliberations over two days, the jury convicted Chauvin of two counts of murder and one of manslaughter.

The verdict – and the aftermath – will be a continuing test for Biden.

He has pledged to help combat racism in policing, helping African Americans who supported him in large numbers in last year’s election in the wake of protests that swept the nation after Floyd’s death and restarted a national conversation about race.

But he also has long projected himself as an ally of police, who are struggling with criticism about long-used tactics and training methods and difficulties in recruitment.

Earlier on Tuesday, Biden broke his administration’s silence on the trial, which has set the nation on edge for weeks, saying he was praying for “the right verdict”.

The president had repeatedly denounced Floyd’s death but had previously stopped short of weighing in on Chauvin’s trial, with White House officials saying it would be improper to speak out during active judicial proceedings.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki repeatedly refused to explain Biden’s comments, doing nothing to dispel the impression that he thought Chauvin should be found guilty.

A commission of historians will on Friday, after two years of work, submit to President Emmanuel Macron a potentially explosive report scrutinizing the role played by France during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

AFP reports that Historian Vincent Duclert, who heads the commission will hand over the report to Macron at 4:30 pm (1530 GMT) and it will then be made public, the presidency said.

There have long been claims that France, then ruled by late President Francois Mitterrand did not do enough to halt the massacres that left at least 800,000 people dead, mainly among the Tutsi ethnic minority, and was even complicit in the crimes.

The issue still poisons modern relations a quarter of a century on between France and Rwanda under its controversial President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who has ruled the mountainous nation in Africa’s Great Lakes region since the aftermath of the genocide.

Macron ordered the creation of the commission in May 2019 to analyse France’s role in Rwanda from 1990-1994 through archival research.

The genocide began after Rwanda’s Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana, with whom Paris had cultivated close ties, was killed when his plane was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994.

France notably led Operation Turquoise, a military-humanitarian intervention launched by Paris under a UN mandate between June and August 1994. Its critics believe that it was in reality aimed at supporting the genocidal Hutu government.

And there have also been repeated accusations that authorities in Paris helped suspects in the Rwanda genocide to escape while under French military protection.

The 15-member commission does not have any specialist on Rwanda, a move the French presidency argues was necessary to ensure complete neutrality.

But the historians — who include experts on the Holocaust, the massacres of Armenians in World War II and international criminal law — have been given access to archives including those of Mitterrand himself which were long closed off to researchers.

They have also examined documents of former right-wing premier Edouard Balladur, who headed the government at the time, as well as archives from the foreign ministry, defence ministry and foreign intelligence service (DGSE).

Duclert himself went to Rwanda in February 2020 but there have been worries over the independence of the commission, notably because it has been working out of the defence ministry in Paris.

While he seeks to position France as an assertive player on the world stage, Macron has taken tentative steps to come to terms with once taboo aspects of the country’s historical record, although many would like to see far bolder steps.

Historian Benjamin Stora was tasked with examining France’s actions during Algeria’s war of independence and he called for a “truth the commission” and other conciliatory actions in a major report delivered in January.

Macron has ruled out an official apology for torture and other abuses carried out by French troops in Algeria.

The contents of the Rwanda report are likely to have a major bearing on future relations between France and Rwanda, which Macron has said he wants to visit later this year.

Macron hosted Kagame in Paris in May 2018, saying the normalisation of relations was underway but “will no doubt take time”.

In a sign of detente, in December 2018 French judges dropped a long-running investigation into the killing of Habyarimana that had seen seven people close to Kagame charged.

A human rights group, on Monday, appealed to the United Nations to investigate allegations China’s government is committing crimes against humanity in the Xinjiang region.

Human Rights Watch cited reports of the mass detention of Muslims, a crackdown on religious practices and other measures against minorities in the northwestern region. It said they amount to crimes against humanity as defined by the treaty that established the International Criminal Court.

China is not a member of the court and could use its veto power as a permanent U.N. Security Council member to block action against Chinese officials, Human Rights Watch said in a report. However, the New York-based group said the U.N. Human Rights Commission should create a body to investigate the charges, identify those responsible and provide a road map to hold them accountable.

More than 1 million people have been confined to camps in Xinjiang, according to foreign governments and researchers. Authorities there are accused of imposing forced labour and birth controls.

The Chinese government rejects complaints of abuses and says the camps are for job training to support economic development and combat Islamic radicalism. The government is pressing foreign clothing and shoe brands to reverse decisions to stop using cotton from Xinjiang due to reports of possible forced labour there.

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in the final days of the Trump administration that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang. His successor under President Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, has retained that designation.

The parliaments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada have accused Beijing of genocide, though Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been reluctant to use the term.

A spokesman for the ruling Communist Party on Monday rejected accusations Beijing has committed genocide or crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Such remarks by Pompeo and others “are totally opposite to the reality in Xinjiang,” said Xu Guixiang, deputy director-general of the party’s propaganda department for Xinjiang.

“You can see stability and harmony in Xinjiang,” Xu said in Kashgar, a historic Silk Road city in southern Xinjiang. “There are no crimes against humanity or genocide, and the populations of ethnic minorities and Uyghurs are on the rise.”

Human Rights Watch, which said it was assisted in the report by a Stanford University Law School human rights clinic, said it had not documented genocidal intent.

However, “if such evidence were to emerge, the acts being committed against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang … could also support a finding of genocide,” the report said.

China has denied the United Nations unfettered access to the region to investigate.

“Who has done the investigation? Who is in the position to act as the judge? And where is the evidence? There isn’t any,” Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told The Associated Press in an interview last week. “They put sanctions on us and then they say they would like to come and do an investigation to collect the evidence. I think this is a typical presumption of guilt.”

The United States has imposed travel and financial sanctions on Chinese officials accused of abuses in Xinjiang. Washington has blocked imports from several companies and of cotton and tomato products from the region.

The Human Rights Watch report called on the European Commission to hold off on submitting a proposed EU-China investment treaty to the European Parliament for approval until the forced labour allegations are investigated, abuses addressed, victims compensated and progress made toward holding those responsible accountable.

The announcement last year that treaty negotiations were completed prompted questions about whether the West could hold China accountable for human rights.

Chad’s President Idriss Deby Itno died on Tuesday from wounds sustained in battle after three decades in power, the army announced.

The shock news came only the day after the 68-year-old career military man was proclaimed the winner of a presidential election that had given him a sixth term in office.

The army also announced a curfew and border closures after the death, as well as the dissolution of government and the parliament

Deby had ruled Chad with an iron fist since taking power on the back of a coup in 1990 but was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the troubled Sahel region.

The army said Deby had been commanding his forces at the weekend as they battled rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day, April 11.

Deby “has just breathed his last breath defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield,” army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television.

The army said a military council led by the late president’s 37-year-old son Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, a four-star general, would replace him.

The council has already met to draw up a transitional charter, Agouna said, without elaborating.

Deby’s son oversaw his father’s security as head of the elite presidential guard and often appeared alongside him, wearing dark glasses and military fatigues.

On Monday, the army had claimed a “great victory” in its battle against the rebels from neighbouring Libya, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT).

FACT, which waged its attacks in the provinces of Tibesti and Kanem, had claimed in a statement that Deby had been wounded – a report that could not be confirmed.

ministers and high-ranking military brass had said Monday that Deby was in the region on Saturday and Sunday after the rebel offensive.

Deby was among the world’s longest-serving leaders.

Provisional results on Monday showed him winning re-election with almost 80 percent of the vote against nine challengers.

His victory had never been in doubt, with a divided opposition, boycott calls, and a campaign in which demonstrations were banned or dispersed.

Deby was a herder’s son from the Zaghawa ethnic group who took the classic path to power through the army and relished the military culture.

He had campaigned for the latest election on a promise of bringing peace and security to the troubled region, but his pledges were undermined by the rebel incursion.

The government had sought Monday to assure concerned residents that the offensive was over.

Panic had been triggered in some areas of the capital N’Djamena on Monday after tanks were seen out on the city’s main roads, an AFP journalist reported.

The tanks were later withdrawn apart from a perimeter around the president’s office, which is under heavy security during normal times.

“The establishment of a security deployment in certain areas of the capital seems to have been misunderstood,” government spokesman Cherif Mahamat Zene had said on Twitter.

“There is no particular threat to fear.”

However, the US embassy in N’Djamena had on Saturday ordered non-essential personnel to leave the country, warning of possible violence in N’Djamena.

Britain also urged its nationals to leave, although France said in an advisory that there was no specific threat to the capital.

FACT, a group mainly made up of the Saharan Goran people, said Sunday that it had “liberated” the Kanem region. Such claims in remote desert combat zones are difficult to verify.

The group has a non-aggression pact with Khalifa Haftar, a military strongman who controls much of Libya’s east.

The Tibesti mountains near the Libyan frontier frequently see fighting between rebels and the army, as well as in the northeast bordering Sudan.

French airstrikes were needed to stop an incursion there in February 2019.

In February 2008, a rebel assault reached the gates of the presidential palace before being pushed back with French backing.

China’s government on Tuesday rejected accusations of abuses in the Xinjiang region after a human rights group appealed for a U.N. investigation into possible crimes against humanity.

Accusations of forced labor or detentions in the northwestern region are “lies and false information concocted by anti-China forces,” said a foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin. He accused critics of trying to “undermine Xinjiang’s stability and security and curb China’s development.”

On Monday, Human Rights Watch appealed to the U.N. Human Rights Commission to investigate reports of the mass detention of Muslims, a crackdown on religious practices and other measures against minorities. It said they amount to crimes against humanity as defined by the treaty that established the International Criminal Court.

More than 1 million people have been confined to camps in Xinjiang, according to foreign governments and researchers. Authorities there are accused of imposing forced labour and birth controls.

Beijing rejects complaints of abuses and says the camps are for job training to support economic development and combat Islamic radicalism. The government is pressing foreign clothing and shoe brands to reverse decisions to stop using cotton from Xinjiang due to reports of possible forced labour.

Wang accused news outlets of acting as a “loudspeaker of lies and disinformation.”

China has denied the United Nations unfettered access to the region to investigate.

Wang called on foreign observers to “respect facts and truth” and to “stop the wrong practice of spreading disinformation about Xinjiang and making false statements at every turn.”

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, a liberal icon who lost one of the most lopsided presidential elections after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died Monday. He was 93.

The death of the former senator, ambassador and Minnesota attorney general was announced in a statement from his family. No cause was cited.

Mondale followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency, serving under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

In a statement Monday night, Carter said he considered Mondale “the best vice president in our country’s history.” He added: “Fritz Mondale provided us all with a model for public service and private behaviour.”

President Joe Biden said of Mondale: “There have been few senators, before or since, who commanded such universal respect. … It was Walter Mondale who defined the vice presidency as a full partnership, and helped provide a model for my service.”

Mondale’s own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan’s popularity. His selection of Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate made him the first major-party presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket, but his declaration that he would raise taxes helped define the race.

On Election Day, he carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. The electoral vote was 525-13 for Reagan — the biggest landslide in the Electoral College since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon in 1936. (Sen. George McGovern got 17 electoral votes in his 1972 defeat, winning Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.)

“I did my best,” Mondale said the day after the election and blamed no one but himself.

“I think you know I’ve never really warmed up to the television,” he said. “In fairness to television, it never really warmed up to me.”

Years later, Mondale said his campaign message had proven to be the right one.

“History has vindicated me that we would have to raise taxes,” he said. “It was very unpopular, but it was undeniably correct.”

In 2002, state and national Democrats looked to Mondale when Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., was killed in a plane crash less than two weeks before Election Day. Mondale agreed to stand in for Wellstone, and early polls showed him with a lead over the Republican candidate, Norm Coleman.

But the 53-year-old Coleman, emphasizing his youth and vigour, out-hustled the then-74-year-old Mondale in an intense six-day campaign. Mondale was also hurt by a partisan memorial service for Wellstone, in which thousands of Democrats booed Republican politicians in attendance. One speaker pleaded: “We are begging you to help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.”

Polls showed the service put off independents and cost Mondale votes. Coleman won by 3 percentage points.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday he was “praying the verdict is the right verdict” in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. He said he believed the case, which has gone to the jury and put the nation on edge, was “overwhelming.”

Biden told reporters he was only weighing in on the trial into the death of George Floyd, who died with Chauvin’s knee on his neck because the jury in the case had been sequestered. He said he called Floyd’s family on Monday to offer prayers and “can only imagine the pressure and anxiety they are feeling.

“They’re a good family and they’re calling for peace and tranquillity no matter what that verdict is,” Biden said. “I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict. I think it’s overwhelming, in my view. I wouldn’t say that unless the jury was sequestered now.”

The president, according to AFP, has repeatedly denounced Floyd’s death but has previously stopped short of weighing in on Chauvin’s trial, with White House officials saying it would be improper to speak out during active judicial proceedings. His comments Tuesday came as his administration has been privately weighing how to handle the upcoming verdict, including considering whether Biden should address the nation and dispatching specially trained community facilitators from the Justice Department, aides and officials told The Associated Press.

Biden’s comments came a day after Judge Peter Cahill, who is presiding over the trial, admonished elected officials about speaking out on the case.

“I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that’s disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function,” he said shortly after sending the jury to begin deliberations.

Biden’s comments carry some risk. Defence attorneys often cite remarks made by public officials as a reason to appeal a verdict, in part because they could poison the jury against the defendant.

Cahill delivered his rebuke after rejecting a defence request for a mistrial based in part on comments from California Rep. Maxine Waters, who said “we’ve got to get more confrontational” if Chauvin isn’t convicted of murder. Speaking of politicians in general, the judge said, “I think if they want to give their opinions, they should do so in a respectful and in a manner that is consistent with their oath to the Constitution to respect a coequal branch of government. Their failure to do so, I think, is abhorrent.”

He conceded to Chauvin’s attorneys that Waters’ comments could potentially be grounds for an appeal.

On Monday, Cahill ordered that jurors be sequestered in an undisclosed hotel during their deliberations and instructed them to avoid all news about the case.

The jury resumed deliberations Tuesday morning after spending a few hours Monday discussing the case behind closed doors. In closing arguments earlier in the day, a prosecutor told jurors that Chauvin “had to know” he was squeezing the life out of George Floyd as he cried over and over that he couldn’t breathe and finally fell silent. Chauvin faces murder and manslaughter charges.

Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told NBC’s “Today” show that Biden “knows how it is to lose a family member … so he was just letting us know that he was praying for us and hoping that everything would come out to be OK.”

The verdict — and the aftermath — will be a yet for Biden, who has pledged to help combat racism in policing, helping African American who supported him in large numbers last year in the wake of protests that swept the nation after Floyd’s death and restarted a national conversation about race. But he also has long projected himself as an ally of police, who are struggling with criticism about long-used tactics and training methods and difficulties in recruitment.

Psaki on Tuesday said Biden was “not looking to influence” the outcome and would weigh in further once the jury reached a verdict. Pressed to expand on the president’s remarks, she added, “I’m not going to provide additional analysis on what he meant.”

The White House, meanwhile, was stepping up preparations for the upcoming verdict. Psaki said administration officials have been in contact with leaders in Minnesota and in other cities and states that saw unrest after Floyd’s death last year.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota have been working with local officials to support law enforcement as they prepare for the possibility of unrest after the verdict, officials said.

And the Justice Department has also dispatched specially trained community facilitators, according to a senior Justice Department official. The official could not discuss the plans publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The officials, part of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, tout themselves as “America’s Peacemaker” for mediating disputes in communities and holding listening sessions to help prevent future conflicts.

A federal civil rights investigation, separate from the trial, remains ongoing. Several witnesses were subpoenaed earlier this year to appear before a federal grand jury considering charges against Chauvin.

The Justice Department’s civil rights investigation has been focused on Chauvin and some of the witnesses, including other officers who worked with Chauvin, people familiar with the matter have told the AP.

Chauvin was prepared to plead guilty to third-degree murder in George Floyd’s death before then-Attorney General William Barr personally blocked the plea deal last year. Barr rejected the deal in part because he felt it was too soon, as the investigation into Floyd’s death was still in its relative infancy, law enforcement officials said.

China and the United States, the world’s two biggest carbon polluters, have agreed to cooperate with other countries to fight climate change.

The joint statement on Sunday followed two days of talks between Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and his US counterpart, John Kerry, in Shanghai.

“The United States and China are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands,” their statement said.

The two countries, according to News Agency, will also continue to discuss “concrete actions in the 2020s to reduce emissions aimed at keeping the Paris Agreement-aligned temperature limit within reach”, it said.

In the Paris accord, countries agreed in 2015 to keep rising global temperatures to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

China and the US are the world’s top carbon polluters, pumping out nearly half of the fossil fuel fumes that are warming the planet’s atmosphere. 

Their cooperation is key to the success of global efforts to curb climate change, but frayed ties over human rights, trade and China’s territorial claims to Taiwan and the South China Sea have been threatening to undermine such efforts.

Kerry’s trip to Shanghai marked the highest-level travel to China by a US official since President Joe Biden took office in January.

Biden, who has said fighting global warming is among his highest priorities, had the US rejoin the Paris climate accord in the first hours of his presidency, undoing the withdrawal ordered by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The new US president has also invited 40 world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, to a virtual summit to discuss the issue on April 22 and 23.

The US and other countries are expected to announce more ambitious national targets for cutting carbon emissions before or during the meeting, along with pledging financial help for climate efforts by less wealthy nations.

When Kerry was still in Shanghai, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng signalled on Friday that China is unlikely to make any new pledges at next week’s summit.

“For a big country with 1.4 billion people, these goals are not easily delivered,” Le said during an interview with The Associated Press news agency in Beijing. “Some countries are asking China to achieve the goals earlier. I am afraid this is not very realistic.”

On whether Xi would join the summit, Le said, “The Chinese side is actively studying the matter.”

During a video meeting with German and French leaders on Friday, Xi said climate change “should not become a geopolitical chip, a target for attacking other countries or an excuse for trade barriers”, though he called for closer cooperation on the issue, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Xi pledged last year that China would achieve “carbon neutrality by 2060” and ensure its greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2030.

The top emitters of greenhouse gases are also preparing for the next United Nations climate summit taking place in Glasgow, United Kingdom, in November. The summit aims to relaunch global efforts to keep rising global temperatures to below 1.5C as agreed in the Paris accord.

According to the US-China statement, both Washington and Beijing “intend to develop” their respective long-term strategies to achieve carbon neutrality by the Glasgow meeting.

Other moves in the near term include boosting “international investment and finance” to support the transition to green energy in developing countries, as well as phasing out production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons, gases used in refrigeration, air conditioners and aerosols.

Longer-term actions that need to be taken to keep the temperature goals of the Paris accord “within reach” include reducing emissions from industry and power generation while stepping up renewable energy, clean transportation and climate-resistant agriculture.

Li Shuo, a policy advisor at Greenpeace East Asia, said Sunday’s joint statement showed the “unequivocal commitment” of China and the US in tackling climate change and should “put global climate momentum back on high gear”.

“The difficult meetings in Shanghai bore fruit. Let that move the politics closer to where science requires us to be,” he said.

Eight family members were killed when unknown attackers opened fire on them at a mosque in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province.

The shooting happened on Saturday night in the city of Jalalabad. According to Nangarhar Governor Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, the killings happened apparently over a land dispute.

Five brothers and three of their male cousins were killed.

“The shooting happened at the time of the tarawih (extra prayers in the evening during Ramadan). This was a targeted attack and initial information shows a land dispute was the reason,” Amarkhil told Al Jazeera.

Clashes over land disputes are common across Afghanistan. The so-called blood feuds can last for decades, passing down through generations in a cycle of violence.

Last April, at least six tribal members were killed and nearly 20 others wounded in armed clashes over disputed land in the same province. The fighting lasted for several days.

Nangarhar, a stronghold of the Taliban and the ISIL (ISIS) group, is rich in plains and is one of the most important areas for agriculture in Afghanistan.