world
Nigeria's Bola Tinubu declared winner of presidential vote
Ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu was declared winner of Nigeria's presidential election early Wednesday, with the two leading opposition candidates already demanding a revote in Africa's most populous nation.
Election officials' overnight announcement was likely to lead to a court challenge by his main opponents Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Abubakar also finished second in the last vote in 2019, then appealed those results before his lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.
On Tuesday, the two leading opposition parties had demanded a revote, saying that delays in uploading election results had made room for irregularities. The ruling All Progressives Congress party urged the opposition to accept defeat and not cause trouble.
Tinubu received 37% of the vote, or nearly 8.8 million, while main opposition candidate Abubakar won 29% with almost 7 million. Third-place finisher Obi took 25% with about 6.1 million, according to the results announced on live television by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Also Read: Nigerian delegation discusses Dhaka-Abuja trade potential with BGMEA
Tinubu "having satisfied the requirements of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected,” said the country’s election chief, Mahmood Yakubu.
The announcement came after 4 a.m., but celebrations already had started late Tuesday at the ruling party’s national secretariat where Tinubu’s supporters had gathered in anticipation of his victory.
“None of the others matches his record!” said Babafemi Akin as he chatted excitedly about the prospects of a Tinubu administration. “I am sure he will do well.”
Tinubu, 70, is the former governor of Lagos state, home to Nigeria's megacity of the same name. However, he lost the state in Saturday's election to Obi, who drew a strong following among younger voters eager for change.
The parties now have three weeks to appeal results, but an election can be invalidated only if it's proven the national electoral body largely didn’t follow the law and acted in ways that could have changed the result.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, though court challenges are common, including by outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, who doggedly fought his past election losses for months in vain.
Nigeria’s presidential election has been closely watched as the country is not only the continent’s largest economy but it is also one of the continent’s top oil producers.
Observers have said Saturday’s election was mostly peaceful, though delays caused some voters to wait until the following day to cast their ballots. Many Nigerians had difficulties getting to their polling stations because of a currency redesign that resulted in a shortage of bank notes.
India revives civil militia after Hindu killings in Kashmir
After seven Hindus were killed in early January in two back-to-back attacks in Dhangri village in disputed Kashmir, former Indian army soldier Satish Kumar described his sleepy mountainous village as an “abode of fear.”
Days after the deadly violence in the village in frontier Rajouri district, where homes are separated by maize and mustard fields, hundreds of residents staged angry protests across the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. In response, Indian authorities revived a government-sponsored militia and began rearming and training thousands of villagers, including some teenagers.
Kumar was among the first people to join the militia under the new drive and authorities armed him with a semiautomatic rifle and 100 bullets.
“I feel like a soldier again,” said the 40-year-old Kumar, who runs a grocery store since his retirement from the Indian military in 2018.
The militia, officially called the “Village Defense Group,” was initially formed in the 1990s as the first line of defense against anti-India insurgents in remote Himalayan villages that government forces could not reach quickly.
Also Read: 2 kids among 6 people die in Kashmir village attack: Police
As the insurgency waned in their operational areas and as some militia members gained notoriety for brutality and rights violations, drawing severe criticism from human rights groups, the militia was largely disbanded.
But the January violence stirred unpleasant memories of past attacks in Rajouri, which is near the highly militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan and where combat between Indian soldiers and rebels is not uncommon.
Brandishing his weapon inside his single-story concrete home on an overcast February day, Kumar justified his decision to join the militia as the “only way to combat fear and protect (my) family from terrorists.”
“I am a trained person and have fought against terrorists. But what is the use of (military) training if you do not have a weapon,” Kumar said. “Believe me, I felt almost incapacitated due to fear.”
On January 1, two gunmen killed four villagers, including a father and his son, and wounded at least five others. The next day, a blast outside one of the houses killed two children and injured at least 10 others. It is still unclear whether the explosive was left behind by the attackers. A week later, one of the injured died at a hospital, raising the overall death toll to seven.
“There was carnage in our village and Hindus were under attack,” Kumar said.
Also Read: Indian police say 4 suspected rebels killed in Kashmir
The police blamed militants fighting against Indian rule for decades in Kashmir, the Himalayan territory claimed by India and Pakistan in its entirety. But two months later, they are yet to announce a breakthrough or name any suspects, exacerbating fear and anger among residents in the village of about 5,000 where Hindus represent about 70% and the rest are Muslims.
The policy to rearm civilians comes after India stripped Kashmir of its semiautonomy and took direct control of the territory amid a months-long security and communications lockdown in 2019. Kashmir has since remained on edge as authorities also put in place a slew of new laws that critics and many Kashmiris fear could change the region’s demographics.
In New Delhi’s effort to shape what it calls “Naya Kashmir,” or a “new Kashmir,” the territory’s people have been largely silenced, with their civil liberties curbed, as India has shown no tolerance for any form of dissent.
So when the Dhangri violence occurred, the Indian government was swift to rearm the civilian militia even though it had announced its reconstitution in August last year.
Officials said they have since armed and provided weapons training to over 100 other Hindu men in Dhangri, while also lifting the ban on gun licenses in the already militarized Rajouri. The village already had over 70 former militiamen, some of whom still possess the colonial British-era Lee–Enfield rifles allotted to them over a decade ago.
For the first time, the militia has also been financially incentivized by the government, which said each member would be paid 4,000 Indian rupees ($48) a month.
Still, the decision to revitalize the Village Defense Group is not without controversy.
Some security and political experts argue that the policy could weaponize divisions in Jammu’s volatile hinterland where communal strife has historically existed.
In the past, more than 200 police cases, including charges of rape, murder and rioting, were registered against some of the tens of thousands of militiamen in Jammu region, according to government data.
“Small arms proliferation is dangerous for any society and when a state does it, it’s a tacit admission of failure to secure a society,” said Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst.
India has a long history of arming civilians in its counterinsurgency efforts and civilian militiamen were first used to fight separatists in India’s northeastern states. In 2005, India’s federal government founded a local militia, the Salwa Judum, to combat Maoist rebels in the central Chhattisgarh state. It was accused by rights groups of committing widespread atrocities and was disbanded in 2011.
In Kashmir, the civil defense groups were armed almost six years after the deadly insurgency against Indian rule began.
S.P. Vaid was a young officer in 1995 when he supervised the creation of the militia’s first unit after two Hindu men were killed in a militant attack in a remote hilly village in Jammu region. Vaid, who recently retired as Indian-controlled Kashmir’s top police officer, said hours after his team reached the village the locals demanded arms for their protection.
“I had no government brief on that, but I immediately sought permission from headquarters to provide the villagers with 10 guns,” he said. “That’s how it started.”
The Indian government formally rolled out a policy to arm villagers a few months later.
Security officials argue that arming civilians deterred militant activity and helped stop the out-migration of Hindus from remote areas, unlike in the Kashmir valley where a year after armed rebellion broke out most local Hindus fled to Jammu amid militant threats and the killings of local community leaders.
Kuldeep Khoda, another former top police officer in the region credited for implementing the policy, said the results “surprised us."
“It was an experiment but it worked,” Khoda said at his home in Jammu city.
For its work on civil defense groups, the region’s police were given an award by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, an influential U.S.-based police group, Khoda said.
The militia, he said, “played a pivotal role in defeating Pakistani designs to instigate communal tensions.”
But Choudhary, the political analyst, said “civilians are not armed in a functional democracy.”
The sharpening divisions already appear stark in Dhangri.
Muslim residents in the village say fear and grief bind them together with their Hindu neighbors, yet their request to join the militia has been refused.
Mohammed Mushtaq is a former paramilitary soldier who lives near the house where gunmen first fired on January 1.
“We have lived together for generations and have a similar social system. But fingers have been pointed at us,” he said. Mushtaq and two other Muslim neighbors, also former soldiers, asked the authorities for weapons under the policy but were refused, he said.
As Mushtaq spoke sitting outside his home, the sounds of religious hymns and devotional songs floated from the loudspeakers of a Hindu temple on top of a hill. The chants were interspersed with the chirping of birds and occasional whistles from pressure cookers in some village kitchens.
Moments later, a muezzin called Muslims to early afternoon prayers.
Kumar, the former soldier and militia member, said the decision not to induct his Muslim neighbors in the militia was “arbitrary” as “we still do not know who carried out the massacre” in Dhangri.
Meanwhile, hundreds of old militia members in Rajouri’s remote hamlets are oiling their weapons again.
“We had locked up our guns and thought we would never need them,” said 38-year-old Usha Raina, who has been a militia member since 2015 along with over two dozen other villagers in the neighboring hamlet of Kalal Khas.
“The incident (in Dhangri) has scared us all and the guns are back in our living rooms,” she said.
Italy: Migrants paid 8,000 euros each for ‘voyage of death’
Rescue teams pulled more bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the death toll from Italy’s latest migration tragedy to 65, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged 8,000 euros (nearly $8,500) for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.
Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in hope of finding their loved ones, some of whom hailed from Afghanistan.
“I am looking for my aunt and her three children,” said Aladdin Mohibzada, adding that he drove 25 hours from Germany to reach the makeshift morgue set up at a sports stadium. He said he had ascertained that his aunt and two of the children died, but that a 5-year-old survived and was being sheltered in a center for minors.
Also Read: Deadly shipwreck in Italy must trigger action to save lives: UN
“We are looking into possibilities to send (the bodies) to Afghanistan, the bodies that are here,” he told The Associated Press outside the morgue. But he complained about a lack of information as authorities scrambled to cope with the disaster. “We are helpless here. We don’t know what we should do.”
At least 65 people, including 14 minors, died when their overcrowded wooden boat slammed into shoals 100 meters (yards) off the shore of Cutro and broke apart early Sunday in rough seas. Eighty people survived, but many more are feared dead since survivors indicated the boat had carried about 170 people when it set off last week from Izmir, Turkey.
Aid groups at the scene have said many of the passengers hailed from Afghanistan, including entire families, as well as from Pakistan, Syria and Iraq. Rescue teams pulled two bodies from the sea on Tuesday, bringing the toll to 65, police said.
Also Read: Rescuers find 60th body off Italy after migrant shipwreck
Premier Giorgia Meloni sent a letter to European leaders demanding quick action on the continent’s longstanding migration problem, insisting that migrants must be stopped from risking their lives on dangerous sea crossings.
“The point is, the more people who set off, the more people risk dying,” she told RAI state television late Monday.
Meloni’s right-wing government, which swept elections last year in part on promises to crack down on migration, has concentrated on complicating efforts by humanitarian boats to make multiple rescues in the central Mediterranean by assigning them ports of disembarkation along Italy’s northern coasts. That means the vessels need more time to return to sea after bringing migrants aboard and taking them safely to shore.
But aid groups’ rescue ships don’t normally operate in the area of Sunday’s shipwreck, which occurred off the Calabrian coast in the Ionian Sea. Rather, the aid groups generally operate in the central Mediterranean, rescuing migrants who set off from Libya or Tunisia — not from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean.
Crotone prosecutor Giuseppe Capoccia confirmed investigators had identified three suspected smugglers, a Turk and two Pakistani nationals. A second Turk is believed to have escaped or died in the wreck.
Italy’s border police said in a statement that organizers of the crossing charged 8,000 euros (around $8,500) each for the “voyage of death.”
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi pushed back at suggestions that the rescue was delayed or affected by government policy discouraging aid groups from staying at sea to rescue migrants.
The EU border agency Frontex has said its aircraft spotted the boat off Crotone at 10:26 p.m. Saturday and alerted Italian authorities. Italy sent out two patrol vessels, but they had to turn back because of the poor weather.
Piantedosi told a parliamentary committee that the ship ran aground and broke apart at around 5 a.m. Sunday.
“There was no delay,” Piantedosi told Corriere della Sera. “Everything possible was done in absolutely prohibitive sea conditions.”
The Italian Coast Guard issued a statement on Tuesday saying Frontex had indicated that the migrants’ boat was “navigating normally” and that only one person could be seen above deck.
It added that an Italian border police vessel, “already operating in the sea” set out to intercept the migrant boat.
“At about 4:30 a.m., some indications by telephone from subjects on land, relative to a boat in danger a few meters from the coast, reached the Coast Guard,″ the statement said.
At that point, a Carabinieri police boat which had been alerted by border police “informed the Coast Guard about the shipwreck.”
In contrast to similar cases of migrant vessels in distress, “no phone indication ever came from migrants aboard” to the Coast Guard, the statement noted.
Not rarely, migrants aboard a vessel in distress contact Alarm Phone, a humanitarian support hotline which relays indications of boats in trouble in the Mediterranean to maritime authorities.
When briefing lawmakers, the interior minister cited figures supporting Italy’s long-held frustration that fellow European Union nations don’t honor pledges to accept a share of asylum-seeking migrants who reach Italy.
Piantedosi said that while these pledges covered some 8,000 migrant relocations from June last year through this month, only 387 people actually were transferred to other EU nations, with Germany taking in most of them.
Uranium particles enriched to 83.7% found in Iran: UN report
Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog found uranium particles enriched up to 83.7% in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site, a report seen Tuesday by The Associated Press said.
The confidential quarterly report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency distributed to member states likely will raise tensions further between Iran and the West over its nuclear program. That’s even as Tehran already faces internal unrest after months of protests and Western anger over sending bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war on Ukraine.
The IAEA report only speaks about “particles,” suggesting that Iran isn’t building a stockpile of uranium enriched above 60% — the level it has been enriching at for some time.
The IAEA report described inspectors discovering on Jan. 21 that two cascades of IR-6 centrifuges at Iran’s Fordo facility had been configured in a way “substantially different” to what had been previously declared. The IAEA took samples the following day, which showed particles up to 83.7% purity, the report said.
“Iran informed the agency that ‘unintended fluctuations’ in enrichment levels may have occurred during the transition period,” the IAEA report said. “Discussions between the agency and Iran to clarify the matter are ongoing.”
Also Read: Iran’s currency hits new low amid anti-government protests
The IAEA report also said that it would “further increase the frequency and intensity of agency verification activities” at Fordo after the discovery.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations told the AP that Massimo Aparo, a top IAEA official, visited the Islamic Republic last week “and checked the alleged enrichment rate.”
“Based on Iran’s assessment, the alleged enrichment percentage between Iran and the IAEA is resolved,” the mission contended. “Due to the IAEA report being prepared before his trip, his trip’s results aren’t in it and hopefully the IAEA director-general will mention it in his oral report to the board of governors” in March.
A spokesman for Iran’s civilian nuclear program, Behrouz Kamalvandi, also sought last week to portray any detection of uranium particles enriched to that level as a momentary side effect of trying to reach a finished product of 60% purity. However, experts say such a great variance in the purity even at the atomic level would appear suspicious to inspectors.
Also Read: Russia, Iran sending top envoys to UN’s human rights council
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal limited Tehran’s uranium stockpile to 300 kilograms (661 pounds) and enrichment to 3.67% — enough to fuel a nuclear power plant. The U.S.′ unilateral withdraw from the accord in 2018 set in motion a series of attacks and escalations by Tehran over its program.
Iran has been producing uranium enriched to 60% purity — a level for which nonproliferation experts already say Tehran has no civilian use. The IAEA report put Iran’s uranium stockpile as of Feb. 12 at some 3,760 kilogram (8,289 pounds) — an increase of 87.1 kilograms (192 pounds) since its last quarterly report in November. Of that, 87.5 kilograms (192 pounds) is enriched up to 60% purity.
Uranium at nearly 84% is almost at weapons-grade levels of 90% — meaning any stockpile of that material could be quickly used to produce an atomic bomb if Iran chooses.
While the IAEA’s director-general has warned Iran now has enough uranium to produce “several” bombs, months more would likely be needed to build a weapon and potentially miniaturize it to put it on a missile. The U.S. intelligence community, as recently as this past weekend, has maintained its assessment that Iran isn’t pursuing an atomic bomb.
“To the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program that we judge they suspended or stopped at the end of 2003,” CIA Director Williams Burns told CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “But the other two legs of the stool, meaning enrichment programs, they’ve obviously advanced very far.”
But Fordo, which sits under a mountain near the holy Shiite city of Qom, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) southwest of Tehran, remains a special concern for the international community. It is about the size of a football field, large enough to house 3,000 centrifuges, but small and hardened enough to lead U.S. officials to suspect it had a military purpose when they exposed the site publicly in 2009.
Meanwhile, a top Defense Department official told the U.S. House of Representative’s Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that Iran could make enough fissile material for one nuclear weapons in under two weeks if Tehran choose to pursue it.
“Iran’s nuclear progress since we left the (deal) has been remarkable,” Colin Kahl said. “Back in 2018, when the previous administration decided to leave the (deal), it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one bomb’s worth of fissile material. Now it would take about 12 days.”
Any explanation from Iran, however, likely won’t be enough to satisfy Israel, Iran’s regional archrival. Already, Israel’s recently reinstalled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened military actions against Tehran. And Israel and Iran have been engaged in a high-stakes shadow war across the wider Middle East since the nuclear deal’s collapse.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Germany’s foreign minister said both her country and Israel are worried about the allegations facing Iran over the nearly 84% enriched uranium.
“We are united by concern about the nuclear escalation on Iran’s part and about the recent reports about the very high uranium enrichment,” Annalena Baerbock said. “There is no plausible civilian justification for such a high enrichment level.”
Speaking in Berlin, Israel’s visiting foreign minister, Eli Cohen, pointed to two options to deal with Iran — using a so-called “snapback” mechanism in the Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 nuclear deal to reimpose U.N. sanctions, and “to have a credible military option on the table as well.”
“From our intelligence and from our knowledge, this is the right time to work on these two specific steps,” he said.
Drones fly deep inside Russia; Putin orders border tightened
Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.
Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country's full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly have avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.
Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.
Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.
Also Read: Flurry of drone strikes hits Russia as TV, radio are hacked
The drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.
A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.
The drone did not cause any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object.”
Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.
Russian forces early Tuesday shot down another Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.
Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in the capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighboring Adygea. It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed a facility it was supposed to attack.
Russia's state RIA Novosti news agency reported a fire at the oil facility, and some other Russian reports said that two drones exploded nearby.
While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod have become a regular occurrence, other strikes reflected a more ambitious effort.
Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.
Andrei Medvedev, a commentator with Russian state television who serves as a deputy speaker of Moscow’s city legislature and runs a popular blog about the war, warned that the drone strikes could be a precursor to wider attacks within Russia that could accompany Ukraine’s attempt to launch a counteroffensive.
“The strikes of exploding drones on targets behind our lines will be part of that offensive,” Medvedev said, adding that Ukraine could try to extend the range of its drones.
Russia hawks urged strong retaliation. Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian army colonel turned military commentator, called for a punishing strike on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv.
Another retired military officer, Viktor Alksnis, noted that the drone attacks marked the expansion of the conflict and criticized Putin for failing to deliver a strong response.
Also on Tuesday, authorities reported that airspace around St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city, was temporarily closed, halting all departures and arrivals at the main airport, Pulkovo. Officials did not give a reason for the move, but some Russian reports claimed that it was triggered by an unidentified drone.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it was conducting air defense drills in western Russia.
Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.
Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.
In another development that fueled tensions across Russia on Tuesday, an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several regions. Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country."
Meanwhile, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appeared to show a Russian warplane in Belarus that Belarusian guerrillas claimed to have targeted as largely intact.
Tuesday’s high-resolution images from Planet Labs PBC and Maxar Technologies showed the Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft after what Belarusian opposition activists described as an attack on the Machulishchy air base Sunday outside the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
However, a discoloration could be seen on the aircraft's distinctive, circular rotodome above its fuselage that could be damage. That discoloration wasn't seen in earlier images of the aircraft at the air base. The Maxar image also showed what appeared to be vehicles near the airplane as well.
Belarusian activists supporting Ukraine alleged that the aircraft was seriously damaged. Russian and Belarusian officials did not comment on the claims.
In Ukraine, four people were killed and five others wounded Tuesday by renewed Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram.
A 68-year-old man was also killed as Russian forces shelled Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.
The fiercest fighting continued to be in eastern areas of Ukraine, where Russia wants control over all four of the provinces it illegally annexed in September.
Ukrainian officials said Russian forces have deployed additional troops and equipment, including the latest T-90 battle tanks, in those areas.
In a video address, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked U.S. industrialists for supporting Ukraine and voiced hope for their support in rebuilding the country after the war. Zelenskyy noted that the country faces a “colossal task” to restore hundreds of thousands of damaged sites, including “whole cities, industries, productions."
White House: No more TikTok on gov’t devices within 30 days
The White House is giving all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices, as the Chinese-owned social media app comes under increasing scrutiny in Washington over security concerns.
The Office of Management and Budget calls the guidance, issued Monday, a “critical step forward in addressing the risks presented by the app to sensitive government data.” Some agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, already have restrictions in place; the guidance calls on the rest of the federal government to follow suit within 30 days.
The White House already does not allow TikTok on its devices.
“The Biden-Harris Administration has invested heavily in defending our nation’s digital infrastructure and curbing foreign adversaries’ access to Americans’ data,” said Chris DeRusha, the federal chief information security officer. “This guidance is part of the Administration’s ongoing commitment to securing our digital infrastructure and protecting the American people’s security and privacy.”
The guidance was first reported by Reuters.
Also Read: TikTok banned on all Canadian government mobile devices
Congress passed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as part of a sweeping government funding package. The legislation does allow for TikTok use in certain cases, including for national security, law enforcement and research purposes.
TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said Monday: “The ban of TikTok on federal devices passed in December without any deliberation, and unfortunately that approach has served as a blueprint for other world governments. These bans are little more than political theater.”
House Republicans are expected to move forward Tuesday with a bill that would give Biden the power to ban TikTok nationwide. The legislation, proposed by Rep. Mike McCaul, looks to circumvent the challenges the administration would face in court if it moved forward with sanctions against the social media company.
Also Read: China says TikTok ban reflects US insecurities
If passed, the proposal would allow the administration to ban not only TikTok but any software applications that threaten national security. McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the app, saying it is being used by the Chinese Communist Party to “manipulate and monitor its users while it gobbles up Americans’ data to be used for their malign activities.”
“Anyone with TikTok downloaded on their device has given the CCP a backdoor to all their personal information. It’s a spy balloon into your phone,” the Texas Republican said in a statement Monday.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., his counterpart in the Senate, did not shut down the idea of the chamber taking up a proposal that would empower Biden to take action against TikTok, saying it was “certainly something to consider.”
Oberwetter said: “We hope that when it comes to addressing national security concerns about TikTok beyond government devices, Congress will explore solutions that won’t have the effect of censoring the voices of millions of Americans.”
TikTok, owned by ByteDance Ltd., remains extremely popular and is used by two-thirds of teens in the U.S. But there is increasing concern that Beijing could obtain control of American user data that the app has obtained.
The company has been dismissive of the ban for federal devices and has noted that it is developing security and data privacy plans as part of the Biden administration’s ongoing national security review.
Canada also announced Monday that it is banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. The European Union’s executive branch said last week it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure.
Fiery Greece train collision kills 32, injures at least 85
A passenger train in Greece carrying hundreds of people collided with an oncoming freight train in a fiery wreck in the country's north early Wednesday, killing 32 and injuring at least 85, officials said.
Multiple cars derailed and at least three burst into flames after the collision near Tempe, a small town next to a valley where major highway and rail tunnels are located, some 380 kilometers (235 miles) north of Athens.
Survivors said several passengers were thrown through the windows of the train cars due to the impact. They said others fought to free themselves after the passenger train buckled, slamming into a field next to the tracks.
Hospital officials in the nearby city of Larissa said at least 25 people had serious injuries.
“The evacuation process is ongoing and is being carried out under very difficult conditions due to the severity of the collision between the two trains,” said Vassilis Varthakoyiannis, a spokesperson for Greece’s firefighting service.
Rescuers wearing head lamps worked in thick smoke, pulling pieces of mangled metal from the cars to search for trapped people. Others scoured the field with flashlights and checked underneath the wreckage. Several of the dead are believed to have been found in the restaurant area near the front of the passenger train.
Also Read: Greece: 3 dead after boat with migrants hits rocks
The possible cause of the collision was not immediately clear. Two rail officials were being questioned by police but had not been detained.
Passengers who received minor injuries or were unharmed were transported by bus to Thessaloniki, 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the north. Police took their names as they arrived, in an effort to track anyone who may be missing.
A teenage survivor who did not give his name told reporters as he got off one of the buses that just before the crash, he felt a strong braking and saw sparks and then there was a sudden stop.
“Our carriage didn’t derail, but the ones in front did and were smashed,” he said, visibly shaken.
He added that the first car caught fire and that he used a bag to break the window of his car, the fourth, and escape.
Also Read: Cargo plane carrying munitions from Serbia to Bangladesh crashes in Greece
Rail operator Hellenic Train said the northbound passenger train from Athens to Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, had about 350 passengers on board.
In comments to state television, Costas Agorastos, the regional governor of the Thessaly area, described the collision as “very powerful" and said it was “a terrible night.”
“The front section of the train was smashed. ... We’re getting cranes to come in and special lifting equipment clear the debris and lift the rail cars. There's debris flung all around the crash site."
Officials said the army had been contacted to assist.
Hellenic Train, which has added highspeed services in recent years, is operated by Italy's FS Group, which runs rail services in several European countries.
China says TikTok ban reflects US insecurities
U.S. government bans on Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok reveal Washington’s own insecurities and are an abuse of state power, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
The U.S. government “has been overstretching the concept of national security and abusing state power to suppress other countries’ companies,” Mao Ning said at a daily briefing. “How unsure of itself can the U.S., the world’s top superpower, be to fear a young person’s favorite app to such a degree?”
The White House is giving all federal agencies, in guidance issued Monday, 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices. The White House already did not allow TikTok on its devices.
TikTok is used by two-thirds of American teens, but there’s concern in Washington that China could use its legal and regulatory powers to obtain private user data or to try to push misinformation or narratives favoring China.
Congress and more than half of U.S. states have so-far banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices.
Some have also moved to apply the ban to any app or website owned by ByteDance Ltd., the private Chinese company that owns TikTok and moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
China has long blocked a long list of foreign social media platforms and messaging apps, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Washington and Beijing are at odds over myriad issues including trade, computer chips and other technology, national security and Taiwan, along with the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. and its shooting down earlier this month.
On Monday, Canada announced it was joining the U.S. in banning TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices.
“I suspect that as government takes the significant step of telling all federal employees that they can no longer use TikTok on their work phones many Canadians from business to private individuals will reflect on the security of their own data and perhaps make choices,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters after the announcement.
Canadian Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said the Chief Information Officer of Canada had determined that TikTok “presents an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security.”
“On a mobile device, TikTok’s data collection methods provide considerable access to the contents of the phone,” Fortier said.
The app will be removed from Canadian government issued phones on Tuesday.
The European Union’s executive branch said last week it has temporarily banned TikTok from phones used by employees as a cybersecurity measure.
TikTok has questioned the bans, saying it has not been given an opportunity to answer questions and governments were cutting themselves off from a platform beloved by millions.
Pakistani court orders arrest of former premier Imran Khan
A Pakistani court on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Imran Khan, as the cricket star-turned-politician called on his supporters to keep up protests amid a roiling political crisis.
The court in the capital Islamabad that ordered the former premier’s arrest said Khan had skipped a hearing on charges of selling state gifts and concealing his assets.
Judge Zafar Iqbal’s order came on a day of political drama in Pakistan, as three other courts on Tuesday ruled Khan was immune from arrest on separate charges relating to allegations of terrorism, attempted murder against a rival politician, and graft.
Tight security and thousands of supporters greeted Imran Khan, 70, as he made his first appearance in Islamabad since being shot in the leg during a protest rally in November. One of Khan’s supporters was killed and a dozen others were wounded in the attack, which drew nationwide condemnation.
Khan has been leading protests for months now calling for early elections to oust the current government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who says polls will be held later this year when Parliament completes its five-year term.
Fawad Chaudhry, a senior leader from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, said there was “a serious threat to the security of Imran Khan and thousands of people” as he moved around the capital. He said Khan was being paraded from one court to another in “fake cases.”
Khan was ousted from the premiership in April through a no-confidence vote by lawmakers. He has accused Sharif of conspiring with the U.S. to oust him from power, without providing evidence.
Legal problems for Khan have continued to mount. In October, an elections tribunal disqualified Khan from holding public office on charges he sold state gifts and concealed assets as premier. He was stripped of his seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan’s Parliament.
Khan has challenged his disqualification and denied wrongdoing.
The latest developments come a day after Islamabad police said they had arrested Amjad Shoaib, a retired army general and Khan ally, on charges of inciting the public and government employees against national institutions.
Shoaib was arrested after he appeared on a Pakistani news channel on Saturday criticizing authorities for keeping Khan’s supporters jailed, especially in remote areas of the country.
The standoff between Khan and Sharif’s government has roiled the country as its economy faces severe problems and a growing currency crisis.
Pakistan is in talks with the International Monetary Fund to revive a bailout that was originally signed in 2019 when Khan was in power.
On Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Pakistan’s rating. The action is seen as a warning that Pakistan is more likely to default on its foreign debts.
Moody’s assessment was driven by Pakistan’s increasingly fragile liquidity and external position that raises default risks to a level consistent with a Caa3 rating.
Wall Street drifts on last day of what’s been a tough month
Stocks are drifting lower Tuesday as Wall Street closes out what’s been a tough February.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 121 points, or 0.4%, at 32,767, as of 9:36 a.m. Eastern time, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
After a hot start to the year bolstered by hopes that inflation was on the way down, Wall Street has slammed into reverse this month. A stream of data has shown inflation and the overall economy are remaining more resilient than expected. That’s forced investors to raise their forecasts for how high the Federal Reserve will take interest rates and how long it will keep them there.
High rates can drive down inflation, but they also raise the risk of a recession down the line because they slow the economy. They also hurt prices for stocks and other investments.
After earlier this year hoping that the Fed could soon pause its aggressive hikes to interest rates, and maybe even begin cutting them late this year, traders have come around to believe the Fed’s long insistence that it plans to take rates higher for longer to ensure the job is done on inflation. Many now see the Fed taking its key overnight interest rate up to at least 5.25%, if not higher, and keeping them there through the end of the year.
The Fed’s rate is currently set in a range of 4.50% to 4.75% after starting last year at virtually zero.
The heightened expectations for rates have sent yields jumping in the bond market this month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.96% from 3.92% late Monday. It helps set rates for mortgages and other loans that shape the economy’s health, and it’s near its highest level since November.
The two-year yield, which moves more on expectations for Fed action, rose to 4.82% from 4.78%. It’s near its highest level since 2007.
Such rate worries have caused the S&P 500’s gain for the year to more than halve. It was up as much as 8.9% in early February, the day before a report showed that U.S. employers hired nearly a third of a million more people in January than expected.
Such strength is good news for the economy and calms fears about a recession hitting imminently. But the Fed worries it could also feed into upward pressure on inflation, which has not been coming down as quickly and as smoothly as hoped.
Now the S&P 500 is hanging onto a gain of 3.5% for the year.
All these worries have come across a backdrop of falling earnings. S&P 500 companies are in the midst of reporting their first decline in profits from year-earlier levels since 2020, when the pandemic was choking the economy, according to FactSet.
Most companies have already reported their results for the last three months of 2022, but several big-name retailers are still on the schedule for this week.
Among them was Target, which on Tuesday reported better profit and revenue than expected for the latest quarter. But it also echoed some other retailers in giving a cautious forecast for upcoming results as U.S. households contend with still-high inflation. Target rose 2.6%.