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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed Sunday to push ahead with impeaching President Donald Trump if he is not removed from office first, adding a powerful voice to a debate that has begun to consume a Democratic Party both eager for impeachment and wary of it, writes Washington Post.

Her unexpected statement virtually assures that the House will move forward with impeachment, even as tensions break out among Democrats over how aggressively to push for it. House members have insisted that Trump faces consequences for inciting last week’s deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, while President-elect Joe Biden has signaled that he does not want the effort to interfere with his agenda.

Both sides are treading carefully, aware that many voters hope Congress will prevent Trump from provoking further violence, but also want Biden to be free to take immediate action on the coronavirus pandemic and a faltering economy. Some Democrats said privately that they are wary of impeachment but unsure how to slow its momentum given intensifying passions against Trump.

The conflict presents Biden with his first test on what could be an early, incendiary dilemma facing his presidency: how hard it to pursue accountability for Trump and those in his orbit.

“There have to be consequences, and that can take various forms,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. “Clearly impeachment has its own consequences, and we recognize that we don’t want to impact the Biden administration. And we want to ensure that whatever we pursue can be achieved.”

Pelosi, D-Calif., on Sunday, said the House would “proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the floor” but announced no firm timeline to do so. Instead, she delivered an ultimatum to Vice President Mike Pence: Democrats plan to first pass a resolution calling on Pence and the Cabinet to remove Trump under the provisions of the 25th Amendment before proceeding with impeachment.

“As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this president is intensified and so is the immediate need for action,” she said.

In a sign of the Democrats’ struggles with the issue, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a Biden ally, and House leader, proposed Sunday that the House vote this week to impeach but wait a few months to submit the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial.

Those comments provoked widespread frustration among Democrats, according to aides and lawmakers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to air internal discussions, and they worried that Clyburn’s remarks would undermine the party’s case for Trump’s quick removal: that he is an immediate danger to the nation.

But Clyburn’s suggestion was not universally spurned. Another House Democrat, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, said in an interview Sunday that the House could delay transmitting the articles long enough to allow the Senate to confirm key national security nominees.

“We are witnessing the birth of a domestic terrorist movement in the United States, … and we must get Biden inaugurated, that he gets his Cabinet into place . . . as quickly as possible so we can address that threat,” said Crow, who supports a rapid impeachment. “And let’s not forget that we have foreign adversaries that are looking to take advantage of moments of weakness and distraction like we have right now.”

Some Democrats are looking to Biden to take a firm public stance and slam the brakes on impeachment, but top Democrats now see it as increasingly unlikely that the president-elect will go further than his measured warning on Friday that whatever else Congress does, it needs to “hit the ground running” on his agenda when he takes office.

“The train has left the station. I think many are worried about how it gets done, how it’s going to be handled, and how to do we make sure it’s not going to divide the country further,” one Democrat said of impeachment. “It’s on a track that, while people have reservations, nobody knows how to stop it.”

On Monday morning, various House members plan to introduce responses to Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol and Trump’s role in encouraging it. Pelosi said Democrats would seek unanimous consent at a brief pro forma session to pass the 25th Amendment measure. Republicans probably will block that move, forcing a floor vote Tuesday.

The earliest action on impeachment could come Tuesday in the House Rules Committee, which would meet to prepare legislation for the House floor; actual votes on impeachment or other items can occur no sooner than Wednesday – a week before Biden’s inauguration.

As of Sunday afternoon, a draft impeachment resolution had garnered 210 co-sponsors in the House, according to Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., one of its authors.

Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are increasingly determined to hold Trump immediately accountable and force his Republican defenders to choose whether to stand by him – a stance that has been reinforced by members’ personal anger at the breach of the Capitol, as well as the fumbling, often-equivocal GOP response. Several said the Republican calls dismissing impeachment as too divisive have further infuriated Democrats.

“Republicans need to be put on the record,” Pelosi said on a Thursday call with her leadership team, according to two people familiar with her remarks.

Phillips said impeachment would move forward unless Republicans embraced an alternative: “It is now Sunday evening, and we’re still awaiting any proposition from the GOP to hold him to account,” he said. “Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about unity. . . . If we want unity within the Congress, I invite a proposition from the GOP to fulfill those conservative principles of accountability and consequence.”

Among those joining the effort, Sunday was Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., co-chair of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, said in a tweet that Congress has a “constitutional and moral obligation” to hold the president accountable “for inciting violence and insurrection.”

Another prominent Blue Dog – Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., who raised concerns about a rapid impeachment in a Friday teleconference of House Democrats – backed the effort late Saturday. “While I have pushed other remedies for his criminal conduct, impeachment is the tool before us and warranted for his seditious acts,” he tweeted.

House Republicans are planning their own conference call on Monday to discuss their approach.

Democrats must act quickly because Trump is scheduled to leave office on Jan. 20 in any case. And the rage of many Democrats is colliding with Biden’s desire to set up an administration that will immediately face crises – as well the desire to repair a government the Biden team sees as badly damaged and demoralized.

A Senate engulfed in an impeachment trial would struggle to do anything else, and Biden has voiced frustration that senators have not moved faster to confirm his Cabinet picks.

“There is an appetite to better understand where President-elect Biden’s head is at relative to what he believes is in the best interest,” Phillips said, acknowledging that Biden doing so publicly “presents complications.”

The dilemma led to a flurry of alternative proposals Sunday as lawmakers looking for a way to navigate the pressures.

Clyburn said his idea of waiting until after the Biden administration’s first 100 days to send articles of impeachment to the Senate would allow the new president to install key members of his team. “Let’s do the people’s work and let’s vote to impeach this president, and then we’ll decide later – or the Senate will decide later – what to do with that,” Clyburn said.

Others said Congress should censure Trump instead of impeaching him, an action that could be taken quickly and possibly attract broader support.

Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting representative in the House said she plans to introduce such a measure Monday, describing it as “the only way to send a bipartisan, bicameral message without delay to the country and the world that the United States is a nation of laws.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a Trump critic, also suggested that he would back a censure motion.

But other Democrats have expressed worry that if the House and Senate do not act quickly, Trump and his supporters will be emboldened to continue working to overturn Biden’s election, and that the country maybe wracked by further threats to the safety of lawmakers, officials and the democratic system.

On Sunday, several high-profile Republicans, including Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, joined the calls for Trump’s removal, potentially making it harder for any Democratic leader to oppose impeachment.

Pelosi told CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that one reason to impeach Trump would be to prevent him from running again in 2024. “There’s strong support in the Congress for impeaching the president a second time,” she said in the interview, which was taped Friday and aired Sunday.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., responding to the argument from some Republicans that impeachment would be a “bad start” for Biden as he seeks to unify the country behind an ambitious agenda, said in a tweet that the country “cannot heal until we first get justice.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a second-term congresswoman who is among the leading voices of the party’s liberal wing, suggested that Democrats should pursue an “all-of-the-above” approach that includes various avenues for ousting the president.

She rejected the idea that removing Trump should take a back seat to Biden’s plans, suggesting Biden’s own safety may be at stake.

“With profound respect, I believe that the president’s safety and the safety of the United States Congress and the security of our country takes precedent over the timing of nominations and the timing of potential confirmations,” Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC News’s “This Week.” “This is an immediate danger right now.”

Some Democrats are pushing for the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which provides for the removal of an unfit president, as a way to resolve the issue quickly without involving Congress. Pelosi said she favors that “because it gets rid of him; he’s out of office.”

But that would require Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to support removing Trump, an unlikely scenario. Some Democrats also cite the 14th Amendment, which prevents individuals from holding office if they have supported insurrection, but that, too, seems remote.

Neither Biden nor Trump spoke publicly Sunday, and the president has been barred from Twitter, his preferred communication channel. White House spokesman Judd Deere said Trump is expected to travel to Alamo, Texas, on Tuesday, to mark progress on his border wall.

While Biden did not directly weigh in on impeachment, he reiterated in a tweet Sunday his theme of looking ahead, saying, “In 10 days, we move forward and rebuild – together.”

That echoed the message of the president-elect’s news conference Friday, when he told reporters he was focused on “getting our agenda moving as quickly as possible” and declined to call on Congress to take any particular action against Trump, saying it was their decision.

“We were duly elected, so I think it’s important that we get on with the business of getting him out of office – and the quickest way that will happen is us being sworn in on the 20th,” Biden said.

One close Biden ally, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the most important thing Republicans can do is stop spreading the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen and help convince Trump’s supporters that Biden is the duly elected president.

“There can only be reconciliation with repentance,” Coons said.

Most Republicans have largely been silent about any consequences for Wednesday’s riot, whether for Trump or the members of Congress who encouraged it. But some on Sunday joined Democrats in calling for Trump to leave the office.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether Trump should step down, Toomey said, “I think at this point, with just a few days left, it’s the best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rearview mirror for us.”

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said that of all of the things Trump has done, “I could probably defend almost all of them” until this point. But in the riot’s aftermath, he would “seriously” consider voting to impeach Trump if he were still a House member.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Christie, a former Trump backer, said he would also vote to impeach if he were in Congress. “If inciting to insurrection isn’t [an impeachable offense], then I don’t really know what is,” Christie said.

Other Republicans remained wary or opposed to impeachment, including most of those currently in office. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., suggested that it was not necessary because there was little chance Trump would repeat his dangerous actions.

“Now, my personal view is that the president touched the hot stove on Wednesday and is unlikely to touch it again. And if that’s the case, I think we – we get -” Blunt said, trailing off. Then, he added: “Every day we get closer to the last day of his presidency, we should be thinking more about the first day of the next president than the last day of his presidency.”

In the sustained fight against the Boko Haram insurgents and the bandits, particularly in the northern part of the country, the Nigerian troops, on Saturday, killed 28 Boko Haram insurgents in that troubled region.

In the operation conducted on Saturday, the troops “tactically out-maneuvered the criminals and engaged them with superior firepower resulting in high casualty on the side of the terrorists in Gujba Local Government Area of Yobe state,” said military spokesperson Benard Onyeuko in a statement on Monday.

Few other Boko Haram terrorists escaped with gunshot wounds, the spokesperson said. The troops also recovered a gun truck, many weapons, and a large quantity of ammunition during the gunfight, he said, adding that mopping-up operations had been intensified in the area.

One soldier was killed while another was wounded during the exchange of fire, Onyeuko said.

The Nigerian Government has launched several militaries operations in recent years to eliminate the extremist group, which emerged in the country’s northeast region over a decade ago and posed security threats to countries in the Lake Chad Basin.

The crew of an Indonesian passenger jet that crashed off Jakarta at the weekend with 62 people aboard did not declare an emergency or report technical problems before it suddenly plunged into the sea, the investigator said Monday.

So far, inspectors have so far been unable to say why the 26-year-old plane crashed just four minutes after takeoff, but they do know the location of the black boxes.

A recording of conversations with air traffic control pointed to routine exchanges, and there was no communication as the Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 plunged about 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) in less than a minute before slamming into the Java Sea, said National Transportation Safety Committee investigator Nurcahyo Utomo.

“It’s like a normal conversation and nothing suspicious,” he told AFP.

“There’s no talk of an emergency or something like that.”

The preliminary data suggested it was “most likely” that the plane was intact when it hit the water Saturday, he added.

“But we don’t know at this stage” what caused the crash, Utomo said.

His comments came as divers searched waters off Jakarta for black boxes — cockpit voice and flight data recorders — that could be crucial to help explain why the plane went down.

There were 62 Indonesian passengers and crew aboard the half-full flight, including 10 children.

The jet’s captain, Afwan — a 54-year-old father of three, who like many Indonesians goes by one name — was a former air force pilot with decades of flying under his belt, according to local media.

Some of the 2,600 personnel working in the recovery effort involving dozens of boats and helicopters are hauling body parts, twisted piece of wreckage and passengers’ clothing from shallow waters about 23 metres (75 feet) deep.

Body bags filled with human remains are being taken to a police hospital where investigators hope to identify victims by matching DNA from their remains to living relatives.

Rapin Akbar, who gave a blood sample to the hospital, had five relatives on board including an older sister, a nephew and his wife and their seven-month-old baby.

They were flying back to Pontianak, the city on Indonesia’s section of Borneo Island, about 90 minutes away.

“(My nephew) had planned to go back to Pontianak on Sunday but changed his mind and decided to fly on Saturday instead,” Akbar told AFP.

“He called me to say the flight was delayed and sent me a picture of their baby. It was (their) first.”

Despite the name, black boxes are usually bright orange with reflective stripes and all commercial planes are obliged to have them on board.

Built to survive at vast depths and in extreme heat, they are fitted with a beacon that can emit a signal for one month.

The devices record information about the speed, altitude, and direction of the plane as well as flight crew conversations.

Black box data help explain nearly 90 percent of all crashes, according to aviation experts. The probe into Saturday’s crash is likely to take months.

Aviation analysts said flight-tracking data showed the plane sharply deviated from its intended course before it went into a steep dive, with bad weather, pilot error, and mechanical malfunction among the potential factors.

“Something quite dramatic has happened after takeoff,” said Stephen Wright, professor of aircraft systems at Finland’s Tampere University.

“The airspeed is far too low. The aircraft didn’t accelerate up to the correct speeds for continuous flight.”

Sriwijaya Air, which flies to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has said little about the plane, which was previously flown by US-based Continental Airlines and United Airlines.

The Indonesian carrier has not recorded a fatal crash since it started operations in 2003.

But the nation’s fast-growing aviation sector has long been plagued by safety concerns, and its airlines were once banned from entering the US and European airspace.

In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed near Jakarta.

That accident — and another in Ethiopia — saw Boeing hit with $2.5 billion in fines over claims it defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded worldwide following the accidents.

The 737 models that went down Saturday was first produced decades ago and was not a MAX variant.

In 2014, an AirAsia plane headed from Surabaya to Singapore crashed with the loss of 162 lives.

A year later more than 140 people, including scores on the ground were killed when a military plane crashed shortly after take-off in Medan on Sumatra island.

Facebook has shut a slew of accounts belonging to Ugandan government officials accused of seeking to manipulate public debate ahead of elections Thursday, the internet giant said Monday.

Uganda is holding presidential and parliamentary elections after a tense and bloody campaign, with incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, 76, facing a stiff challenge from the pop star-turned-politician Bobi Wine, 38.

“This month, we removed a network of accounts and pages in Uganda that engaged in CIB (Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour) to target public debate ahead of the election,” Facebook’s head of communication for sub-Saharan Africa, Kezia Anim-Addo, said in an email.

“They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular than they were.”

Anim-Addo said the network was linked to the government ministry of information and communications technology.

“Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network.”

Museveni’s senior press secretary Don Wanyama, who saw both his Facebook and Instagram account shut down, accused the company of seeking to influence the election.

“Shame on the foreign forces that think they can aid and plant a puppet leadership on Uganda by disabling online accounts of (ruling party) NRM supporters,” he said on Twitter.

“You won’t take away President Kaguta Museveni” he added, using the president’s second name.

Museveni’s online account is still active but many government officials and members of the ruling party have seen their pages taken down, including a well-known blogger and Museveni supporter, a prominent doctor and a senior official in the information ministry.

The president has long accused foreign organizations and elements of backing Bobi Wine in a bid to remove his government.

Anim-Addo said over 100 such networks seeking to manipulate public debate has been removed worldwide since 2017.

In December, networks managed from Russia and France – one linked to the French army – were deleted over accusations of interference operations in Africa.

And in October Facebook shut down the page of the conspiracy-fuelled political party in New Zealand accused of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus ahead of elections there.

Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others have come under increasing scrutiny over the content they allow to spread on their networks.

They notably blocked US President Donald Trump after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol last Wednesday.

A Muslim Turkish televangelist who surrounded himself with scantily-clad women on TV was jailed for more than 1,000 years on Monday for sex crimes, local media reported.

Adnan Oktar preached conservative views while women he called his “kittens”, many of whom appeared to have had plastic surgery danced around him in the TV studio.

The 64-year-old was detained in June 2018 as part of a crackdown on his group by the financial crimes unit of the Istanbul police.

He was sentenced to 1,075 years for crimes including sexual assault, sexual abuse of minors, fraud, and attempted political and military espionage, the private NTV broadcaster reported. 

Some 236 suspects have been on trial in the case, 78 of whom are under arrest, according to the official Anadolu news agency.

The hearings have featured lurid details and harrowing sex crime allegations. Oktar told the presiding judge in December that he had close to 1,000 girlfriends. 

“There is an overflowing of love in my heart for women. Love is a human quality. It is a quality of a Muslim,” he said in another hearing in October.

He added on another occasion: “I am extraordinarily potent.”

Oktar first came to public attention in the 1990s when he was the leader of a sect that was caught up in multiple sex scandals.

His online A9 television channel began broadcasting in 2011, drawing denunciations from Turkey’s religious leaders.

One of the women at his trial, identified only as CC, told the court that Oktar had repeatedly sexually abused her and other women.

Some of the women he had raped were forced to take contraceptive pills, CC told the court.

Asked about 69,000 contraception pills found in his home by the police, Oktar said they were used to treat skin disorders and menstrual irregularities.

He also dismissed any link to a group led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish authorities accuse of orchestrating a coup attempt in 2016.

Oktar is a creationist who rejects the Darwinian theory of evolution and has written a 770-page book called “The Atlas of Creation” under the pen name, Harun Yahya.

At least six rangers in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, famous for its mountain gorillas, were killed Sunday in an attack official blamed on a militia group.

The UNESCO World Heritage site is caught up in persistent unrest in the eastern North Kivu province, where a plethora of armed groups are battling for control of rich mineral deposits.

“Mai-Mai (militia) carried out an ambush at Nyamitwitwi. The provisional toll is six park rangers killed along with two Mai-Mai,” local government delegate Alphonse Kambale told AFP.

Provincial lawmaker Elie Nzaghani confirmed the tally from Nyamitwitwi in Rutshuru province.

“We confirm that a group of armed men attacked our positions in the region of Nyamitwitwi, a central sector of the park in the territory of Rutshuru” in North Kivu province, the park’s spokesman Olivier Mukisya told AFP by email.

Mukisya said six rangers were killed and another was seriously injured in the attack around 9:30 am.

Virunga Park, created in 1925, covers some 7,800 square kilometres and is home to about a quarter of the world’s population of critically endangered mountain gorillas.

Nearly 700 armed rangers work in Virunga where sources say at least 200 have paid with their lives in attacks going back more than a decade.

Various rival armed groups have repeatedly clashed over land and resources and stoked tensions in North Kivu, which like the rest of eastern DRC has been riven by decades of conflict.

Mai-Mai militia groups have been accused of killing hundreds of civilians over the years.

Mai-Mai (the word comes from the Swahili for water) sprinkle themselves with water before going into combat in the belief it affords them protection.

Authorities have pinpointed the location of two black boxes from a crashed Indonesian jet, they said Sunday, referring to cockpit voice and flight data recorders that could help explain why the aircraft went down with 62 people aboard.

The announcement came as divers pulled body parts, wreckage, and clothing from waters off Indonesia’s capital Jakarta.

“We have located the position of the black boxes, both of them,” said Soerjanto Tjahjanto, head of Indonesia’s transport safety agency.

“Divers will start looking for them now and hopefully it won’t be long before we get them.”

The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 went into a steep dive about four minutes after it left Soekarno-Hatta international airport in Jakarta on Saturday afternoon.

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo expressed his “deep condolences”, and called on citizens to “pray together so that victims can be found”.

But the frantic search involving helicopters and a flotilla of warships appeared to offer no hope of finding any survivors.

The search and rescue agency said it had so far collected five body bags with human remains as well as debris from the crash site in the Java Sea.

A piece of child’s clothing, a broken tyre and wheel, life jackets, and wreckage from the plane’s body were found, according to authorities and AFP reporters on the scene.

Among the passengers were Beben Sofian, 59, and her husband Dan Razanah, 58.

“They took a selfie and sent it to their kids before taking off,” the couple’s nephew Hendra told AFP.

All 62 people on board, passengers and crew, were Indonesian, authorities said. The count included 10 children.

Distraught relatives waited nervously for news at the airport in Pontianak, the city on Indonesia’s section of Borneo island which had been flight SJ182’s destination, about 90 minutes flying time over the Java Sea.

“I have four family members on the flight — my wife and three children,” Yaman Zai said on Saturday evening as he sobbed.

“(My wife) sent me a picture of the baby today… How could my heart not be torn into pieces?”

Data from FlightRadar24 indicated that the airliner reached an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) before dropping suddenly to 250 feet. It then lost contact with air traffic control.

The transport minister said Saturday that the jet appeared to deviate from its intended course just before it disappeared from radar.

Poor weather, pilot error, or a technical problem with the plane were potential factors, said Jakarta-based aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman.

“But it’s way too early to conclude anything,” he added.

“After the black box is found we can start putting the puzzle together.”

Sriwijaya Air, which operates flights to destinations in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, has said only that it was investigating the loss of contact.

It did not immediately comment when contacted by AFP again on Sunday.

In October 2018, 189 people were killed when a Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX jet crashed near Jakarta.

That crash — and another in Ethiopia — saw Boeing hit with $2.5 billion in fines over claims it defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 MAX model, which was grounded worldwide following the two deadly crashes.

The 26-year-old 737 that went down Saturday was not a MAX variant.

“Our thoughts are with the crew, passengers, and their families,” Boeing said in a statement, adding that it was in contact with the airline.

Indonesia’s aviation sector has long had a reputation for poor safety, and its airlines were once banned from entering the US and European airspace.

In 2014, an AirAsia plane headed from Surabaya to Singapore crashed with the loss of 162 lives.

Domestic investigators’ final report on that crash said major factors included a chronically faulty component in a rudder control system, poor maintenance, and the pilots’ inadequate response.

A year later, in 2015, more than 140 people, including scores on the ground, were killed when a military plane crashed shortly after take-off in Medan on Sumatra island.

Security chiefs have assured Ugandans of peace during and after the elections set for January 14.

They made the remarks during a joint security press conference on the forthcoming general elections at police headquarters in Naguru, Kampala.

They also advised people living in towns against fleeing to rural areas in anticipation of election violence.  

The deputy commander of Land Forces, Maj Gen Sam Kavuma, dismissed concern from the public that there will be violence if some presidential candidates don’t win the election.

“We have been receiving information and intelligence that some of our people are scared. Some have started leaving the places where they registered to vote and are going to villages. That isn’t good. Ugandans are supposed to exercise their constitutional rights in choosing their leaders,” Maj Gen Kavuma said.

Inspector-General of Police, Martins Okoth Ochola, said whoever causes violence will be prosecuted.

“I assure the whole country that whoever foments trouble will regret why his or her mother gave birth to him or her. I repeat, whoever thinks will cause anarchy in this country will regret the consequences,”  he said.

The run-up to the general elections has been marred by violence, with more than 50 people shot dead between November 18 and 19 last year, during protests against the arrest of National Unity Platform presidential candidate  Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine.

On the issue of security agents attacking journalists covering the elections, Mr Ochola said the latter is to blame.

He accused them of attacking security officers and unjustly portraying police as a brutal force that is undermining the government.

“It isn’t that we are targeting the media. No, we are protecting your lives. We are telling you that there is danger there, you are insisting that you must go there [sic. Yes, we shall beat you for your own sake – to help you understand [that you should] not to go there. Yes, we shall use reasonable force to ensure that you don’t go where there is a risk. Actually, I have no apology,” he said.

Several journalists have been attacked by security forces during election campaigns, with one still under intensive care.

Defence minister Adolf Mwesige used the forum to ask Ugandans to vote for President Museveni before adding that the deployment of soldiers around the country is intended to provide security.

“Security forces including Uganda Peoples Defence Forces will be deployed during and after the elections to protect your businesses and investments including tourism sites. They will be fully protected so there is no need to panic,” he said.

Responding to Mr Kyagulanyi’s decision to evacuate his children from Uganda due to fears that they could be harmed, Mr Mwesige said, “It isn’t correct to allege that … those fears that are unfounded. I would like to ask all these candidates to settle down. Their families will be safe.”

Internal Affairs minister, Gen Odongo Jeje, said some presidential candidates have issued statements threatening peace and security.

“These utterances and actions have caused concern and, to some extent, worry for a number of citizens. Citizens now fear that come January 14 and/or immediately after, their lives and property might be threatened,” he said.

He cautioned against violence, saying, “You don’t have the means to cause violence and it might be extremely detrimental for you to attempt to do so. It is only good manners to try not to do what you know you can’t accomplish. Don’t even attempt it.”

Commissioner-General of Prisons, Johnson Byabashaija, said they are creating more space in detention centres to accommodate those remanded.

In the aftermath of his supporters’ invasion of Capitol, Facebook has banned President Donald Trump from the platform “indefinitely” due to the US leader’s efforts to incite the violence in the US capital this week, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday.

Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page that the ban, which was announced Wednesday for 24 hours, was extended because of Trump’s “use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great,” he wrote.

“Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Earlier in the day, Twitter announced that it had blocked Trump’s posts. Twitter and Facebook suspended Donald Trump over posts accused of inflaming violence in the US Capitol, as social media scrambled to respond to mayhem by supporters buying into his baseless attacks on the integrity of the election.

South Africa’s health ministry said on Thursday that the country would get 1.5 million vaccines from the Serum Institute of India (SII), with a million coming in January and the remainder the following month.

The ministry added in a statement that it was working with the country’s health regulator SAHPRA to ensure there were no delays with the rollout of the vaccines.

“We are happy that the SII/ Astra Zeneca vaccine has already been approved by various regulators and is being rolled out in other countries. Therefore, as part of expediting the regulatory process, SAHPRA is applying reliance on that regulatory work.

“We also want to inform the public that the acquisition has been done directly by the Department of Health. This strengthens the credibility of the process as all the negotiations and payment issues are managed directly by the government with the manufacturer. We will now be engaging all relevant stakeholders in order to ensure the efficient and effective roll-out of the vaccine for our health workers,” Health Minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize said.

He reiterated that in an earlier presentation, it was stated that an estimated 1.25 million health care workers both from the public and the private sector are prioritized.

“We urge the public to be patient with us as we continue to engage manufacturers. Our commitment remains to save and protect the lives of our people. We will not neglect our responsibility to protect lives and also fight this pandemic. We, therefore, call on all South Africans, members of the public, political parties, business, labour, NGOs and community leaders and members to work with us as we start this historic process,” Mkhize said.

According to its Covid-19 vaccine rollout strategy, the government is aiming to vaccinate 67% of the country’s population against Covid-19 to achieve herd immunity. This equates to just over 40 million people.

Ministerial Advisory Committee member Barry Schoub has previously said that herd immunity would be used to slow down the rate of transmission of the virus.

“Herd immunity is basically the threshold of the number of people needed in a population to achieve immunity toward the virus. We have calculated the 67% based on the reproductive rate of the virus,” said Schoub.

According to the rollout strategy the groups that would get access to the vaccine first, reports iol.com, are as follows:

Phase One:

* Healthcare workers: Health professionals, nurses, general health workers, care home workers, selected laboratory workers, and traditional healers. Target population: 1 250 000

Phase Two:

* Essential workers: This group includes police officers, miners, and workers in the security, retail food, funeral, travel, banking, and essential municipal and Home Affairs services. Target population: 2 500 000

* Persons with comorbidities and at risk for morbidity and mortality: These include persons 60 years and older, persons living with HIV, tuberculosis, diabetics, chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, renal disease, obesity. Target population: 13 000 000

* Persons in congregate or overcrowded settings: This group includes persons in prison, detention centres, shelters, and care homes. In addition, people working in the hospitality and tourism industry, and educational institutions are also at risk. Target population: 1 100 000

Phase 3

* Persons are younger than 18 years. Target population: 22 500 000

More than 20 000 South Africans tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday taking the country’s cumulative count to 1 149 591.

Mkhize confirmed that 21 832 new cases and 844 deaths were confirmed on Wednesday, with the 452 deaths reported from the Eastern Cape coming as a result of data reconciliation dating between May and November 2020.

The total number of Covid-19 related deaths in South Africa now stands at 31 368.