Month: September 2023

Switzerland’s glaciers suffered their second worst melt rate this year after record 2022 losses, shrinking their overall volume by 10% in the last two years, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Thursday.

The one-two punch for Swiss glaciers during the country’s third hottest summer on record means they lost as much ice in two years as in the three decades before 1990, it said, describing the losses as “catastrophic”.

“This year was very problematic for glaciers because there was really little snow in winter, and the summer was very warm,” Matthias Huss, who leads Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), told Reuters.

“The combination of these two factors is the worst that can happen to glaciers.”

More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change.

This year, low winter snowfall combined with an early start and a late end to the summer melt season dealt the heavy losses, GLAMOS said.

In the peak melt month of August, the Swiss weather service said the elevation at which precipitation freezes hit a new record overnight high, measured at 5,289 meters (17,350 ft), an altitude higher than Mont Blanc’s summit. This exceeded last year’s record of 5,184 meters.

Pictures posted by Huss on social media during data collection trips in recent weeks showed for the first time on record new lakes forming next to glacier tongues, streams of melt water running through ice caves, and bare rock poking out from thinning ice. In some places, bodies lost long ago have been recovered as ice sheets have shrunk.

“We are really losing the small glaciers,” Huss said. “The remnant ice is becoming covered by rocks and debris, regions that have been snow and ice covered over the last decades and centuries are becoming just black slopes that are dangerous because of rockfall.”

In some places, GLAMOS had to cease monitoring due to the melt.

“We have closed down one of our monitoring programs on a small glacier in central Switzerland because it just became too dangerous to measure,” Huss said. “It became very small and therefore unrepresentative.”

Swiss records go back to at least 1960 and as far back as 1914 for some glaciers.

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Conditioning U.S. aid to Israel is a nonstarter for the many Republicans and Democrats who require an ironclad guarantee for the U.S.-Israel alliance. But former President Donald Trump, fresh off a trip to Israel in 2017, expressed annoyance when told he couldn’t leverage U.S. military aid to Israel to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians, a new book claims. 

“I was told ‘there’s no connection,’” Trump told a group of journalists during a dinner at the White House, according to  Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, which is scheduled for release on Tuesday.

“No connection?” Trump added in disbelief. 

The book’s author, Martin Baron, was executive editor of The Washington Post at the time of the dinner, which he attended with other journalists from the newspaper.

Frustrations with Netanyahu

Trump’s inquiry about conditioning the annual $3.8 billion in U.S. assistance to Israel came after he met with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on that June 2017 trip.

According to a recent book by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump was more impressed with the Palestinian leader. “I thought he was terrific,” Trump said of Abbas in an interview with the author. “I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu.”

Trump also complained to then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that “Bibi doesn’t want peace,” according to Netanyahu’s recent memoir.

Trump repeatedly groused about Netanyahu’s refusal to go along with his idea for an “ultimate deal” with the Palestinians. He expressed frustration that he had to postpone the rollout of his Middle East peace plan, blaming Netanyahu’s failure to form a government after several rounds of elections. When the plan was unveiled at the White House on January 28, 2020, Netanyahu caused an uproar by suggesting the U.S. initiative was a green light for the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Trump’s Israel record

Despite his suggestion to condition military aid, and the sometimes rocky relationship between the two leaders, Trump was hailed by Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” During his tenure, the U.S. embassy was relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the U.S. formally recognized Israel’s control over the Golan Heights and withdrew from the Iran deal, and four Arab countries signed normalization deals with Israel. 

A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed 71% of Israelis had faith in Trump’s leadership and 55% approved of his policies. 

Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024 and is in a statistical tie with President Joe Biden, according to recent polls. GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently came under fire for pledging to end Israel’s dependence on U.S. assistance. 

The post Trump was frustrated that he couldn’t leverage U.S. aid to push Israel toward a peace deal, book claims appeared first on The Forward.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin returns to the United States Thursday after wrapping up his first tour across the African continent as Pentagon chief.

Austin started his tour in Djibouti, home to the primary U.S. military base on the African continent. There he met with Djiboutian leaders and Somalia’s president, whose forces, Austin said, had made more progress against the al-Shabab terror group in the past year than the previous five years combined. 

Austin then turned to Kenya, visiting a base in Manda Bay near the Somali border where a terrorist attack in 2020 killed three Americans. 

 

“Message here being very clear that the war on terror still remains top on the agenda of the American government,” said Vincent Kimosop, a policy analyst with Sovereign Insight. 

 

The American and Kenyan defense secretaries signed a five-year security agreement to support working together against their common terror threat. 

 

Austin also pledged $100 million in support of Kenyan security deployments, as Kenya prepares to lead a multinational peacekeeping mission to Haiti to combat gang violence. 

 

“Kenya is ready, Kenya is willing to lead that multinational peacekeeping force that will go to Haiti,” said Kenyan Cabinet Secretary of Defense Aden Duale.

 

Austin ended his trip on Africa’s western coast, becoming the first U.S. defense secretary to ever visit Angola. Officials of both nations are hopeful that Angola can dump Russia as its arms supplier and opt for American-made weapons.

“Africa deserves better than outsiders trying to tighten their grip on this continent,” Austin said. “Africa deserves better than autocrats selling cheap guns, pushing mercenary forces like the Wagner Group or depriving grain from hungry people all around the world.”

 

Austin called out African military juntas without naming Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali or Niger. It was his most forceful rhetoric since the military removed Niger’s elected president from power in July. 

 

“When generals overturn the will of the people and put their own ambitions above the rule of law, security suffers — and democracy dies,” Austin said. “Militaries exist to defend their people, not to defy them. And Africa needs militaries that serve their citizens and not the other way around.” 

 

France decided this week to withdraw its military forces from Niger by the end of the year, and analysts say the U.S. could follow suit should the Nigerien military not return the elected government to power. 

 

“Niger has become the key hub, the key center of counterterrorism operations for the U.S. and France in the region,” said Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And if this is, if it’s cut back, or if it’s reduced, or if it’s ended, there is no other assets in the region that the U.S. can use.”

 

The U.S. has so far kept its forces in Niger, but the Pentagon has declined to conduct counterterror operations with Niger’s military.

Republican presidential hopefuls take to the debate stage on Wednesday night in California. VOA is on the ground in Armenia. In what appears to be an international effort, an American soldier is freed from North Korea. Plus Women in Indian-Administered Kashmir are finding their voice.

Former vice president and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence was hot for teacher during Wednesday evening’s second GOP debate, boasting that he’s “been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.”

“My wife, uh, isn’t a member of the teachers’ union, but I’ve got to admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” Pence said after fielding a question on education.

Pence’s wife, Karen, taught elementary school for more than two decades before Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012.

The post BEASTMODE: Pence Says He’s ‘Been Sleeping With a Teacher For 38 Years’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley snapped at fellow 2024 challenger Vivek Ramaswamy for his prolific use of Chinese spyware app TikTok, telling him during Wednesday evening’s second GOP debate that she feels “a little bit dumber” when he speaks.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley interjected as Ramaswamy praised TikTok’s ability to connect politicians with younger voters. “This is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have.”

TikTok—and China’s spy operations more broadly—have been a hot topic among the 2024 GOP challengers, with each vowing to enact an outright ban on the app’s use in America. Ramaswamy, who later clarified that he would also ban the app eventually, said he views it as an important platform to connect with younger voters.

More than “150 million people are on TikTok,” Haley told Ramaswamy. “That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get your text messages, they can get all of these things. China knows what it is doing.”

Shortly after the exchange, Fox News cut to a commercial break that featured a TikTok ad.

The post BEASTMODE: Nikki Haley to Vivek: ‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel A Little Bit Dumber’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The White House says a new advisory council composed of prominent Americans of African heritage aims at “enhancing dialogue between U.S. officials and the African diaspora” — a key focus of President Joe Biden’s partnership-focused revamped Africa strategy. 

The initiative coincides with a steady, two-decade rise in immigration from the continent that will have a significant demographic impact in coming decades.  

The 12 members of the volunteer council — called the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in the United States — were chosen from more than 100 “exceptional” applications and recommendations, said Johnnie Carson, a longtime Africa diplomat who serves as Biden’s special representative to oversee the implementation of the 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. 

The council, whose quarterly meetings will be open to the public, is packed with business leaders but also includes artistic figures and a WNBA player. 

Carson said it will advise the White House and State Department on how to “deepen the connections that exist between the U.S. and Africa in the business world, in the financial world, in the sporting world, in the creative world, and to stress and bring to the attention of American policymakers issues of concern to the diaspora community.” 

Group includes clergy, artists, writers

The council members come from eight U.S. states and the capital, and have ties spanning the African continent. 

Some members are U.S.-born, including council leader the Rev. Silvester Beaman, a bishop at the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and decorated artist, actress, producer and author ​Viola Davis. 

Others were born on the continent, like Eritrea-born Almaz Negash, founder of the African Diaspora Network, and Congo-born Patrick Gaspard, the former U.S. ambassador to South Africa.  

Gaspard, who now leads the Center for American Progress think tank, told VOA that his priorities on the council will be promoting two key programs soon up for congressional renewal: the trade-related African Growth and Opportunity Act and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). 

Both programs, started under President George W. Bush, have been credited with boosting trade and saving lives.  

Other members, he said, bring different perspectives. He anticipates they will cover “everything from cultural ties, to economic ties to what we do together to solve for the big challenges. … We have the chance to turn that into opportunities.” 

One in 10 Black Americans is a recent immigrant, according to the Pew Research Center, which projects that the nation’s Black immigrant population will account for roughly a third of the U.S. Black population’s growth through 2060. 

And, said Cameroon-born analyst and writer Yaya Moussa, the large size of the African diaspora in the U.S. offers a “potential powerful role in the soft power competition.” 

“These connections simply do not exist in China and Russia, America’s biggest strategic rivals in Africa,” writes Moussa. “African-Americans have been instrumental in shaping U.S. foreign policy toward Africa, and the U.S. government has begun to recognize the latent strength of its diaspora communities.” 

‘There may be opportunities’

Oye Owolewa is among a small group of Africa-born immigrants who has risen within the American system: in 2020, the Nigeria-born pharmacist was elected as Washington, D.C.’s shadow representative in the House of Representatives. That position does not make him a voting member of Congress.  

Owolewa, who is not on the diaspora council, offered his take:  

“If it isn’t just a one-off, then I believe that there may be opportunities for people outside of the White House to also have their own collective impact and continue what we’re doing,” he told VOA.  

His office has taken a particular interest in an issue that he believes uplifts residents of his constituency, of whom 13% are foreign-born and 45% are Black: That is teaching women- and minority-owned businesses how to apply for often-lucrative U.S. government contracts. 

VOA pointed out that there are set-asides in government contracting regulations for those very kinds of businesses. 

“That’s true,” he said. “But no one teaches these businesses how to get contracts. So our office has been doing that. Because if you roll out the money, but don’t teach those that fall between the cracks how to retrieve it, it’s the same few getting more opportunities.” 

And that, Gaspard said, is what the council broadly aims to do, but on a larger scale. 

“There really is a need to strengthen those ties, the umbilical cord that stretches from the continent to its diaspora,” he said. 

“The diaspora is growing leaps and bounds in places like Detroit, certainly my hometown of New York, and you can’t go into a public institution in Washington, D.C. without encountering the African diaspora,” he said. “It’s now more important than ever for us to kind of more broadly socialize awareness of the disparate cultures, but that leads to real opportunities for partnership.” 

Burkina Faso’s military government said Wednesday it had foiled a coup attempt the previous day, almost a year after the country’s leader came to power in a coup himself.

In a statement read out on state television, it said “a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023, by Burkina Faso’s intelligence and security services.

“At present, officers and other alleged participants in this destabilization attempt have been arrested and others are being actively sought,” the statement said.

It said the alleged perpetrators “had the sinister intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging the country into chaos.”

Junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power on September 30, 2022, the landlocked country’s second coup in eight months.

The two takeovers were each triggered in part by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency which swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015.

Late on Tuesday thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Ouagadougou, following a call from Traore supporters to defend him amid rumors of a coup on social media.

The military government said it would seek to shed “all possible light on this plot.”

It said it “regrets that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature, which aims to hinder the Burkinabe people’s march for sovereignty and total liberation from the terrorist hordes trying to enslave them.”

Earlier this month, the country’s military prosecutor said three soldiers had been arrested and charged with plotting against the ruling junta.

Investigators had received a tipoff about “soldiers and former soldiers working in intelligence” who were scouting out the homes and other locations used by key figures in the junta, including Traore.

Their goal was to “destabilize … the transition,” it said, referring to a term used to describe interim military rule before promised elections.

Shortly after Traore’s takeover, military prosecutors in December 2022 also said there had been an attempt to “destabilize state institutions.”

Those behind it, they said, were civilians and a lieutenant-colonel named Emmanuel Zoungrana.

More than 17,000 civilians and troops have died in jihadi attacks in Burkina Faso, according to a count by an NGO monitor called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

More than 2 million people have also been uprooted, making it one of the worst internal displacement crises in Africa.

Anger within the Burkinabe armed forces led to a coup in January 2022, toppling elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

On September 30, Kabore’s nemesis, Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, was himself overthrown.

Last week the government claimed nearly 192,000 internally displaced people had returned to their homes after various regions were retaken by government forces.

Jihadist attacks continue unabated despite government claims to have wrested back territory.

The March 2021 helicopter crash in Alaska that killed billionaire Petr Kellner and four others was likely caused by pilot error and inadequate training, a report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Wednesday.

Kellner, who was at the time the Czech Republic’s richest man and founder of investment group PPF, was killed in the crash on a heli-skiing trip in Alaska. The crash took place near Knik Glacier northeast of Anchorage.

The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was “the pilot’s failure to adequately respond to an encounter with whiteout conditions, which resulted in the helicopter’s collision with terrain.”

The operator’s inadequate pilot training program and pilot competency checks also contributed to the accident, the NTSB report added.

It also said the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) principal operations inspector’s “insufficient oversight of the operator” contributed to the incident. One passenger had survived the crash but there was a delayed notification of search and rescue organizations, the NTSB report showed.

Kellner was a towering figure in the Czech Republic’s post-communist era, amassing wealth estimated at the time of his death at $17.5 billion according to Forbes.

He was the world’s 68th richest person on Forbes’ 2020 list, tied with media giant Rupert Murdoch and his family.

His heirs filed a lawsuit in Alaska in April in the quest for a probe into “potential negligence” that caused the deadly crash.

More than three months since the start of Ukraine’s much-hyped counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces have only managed to liberate a tiny portion of the territory currently under Russian occupation. However, the success or failure of the campaign cannot be measured in square kilometers alone. Beyond the front lines, the Ukrainian military is steadily reducing Russia’s ability to wage war and is methodically creating the conditions for future advances. This progress is nowhere more evident than in Crimea.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has carried out a number of strategically significant attacks across the Crimean peninsula, which has been under Russian occupation since early 2014 and has served as a key logistics hub for current invasion. These operations are enabling Ukraine to threaten the supply lines of the Russian army in southern Ukraine, while also making it increasingly difficult for the Russian navy to maintain a presence in the northwestern Black Sea.

Employing a combination of Ukrainian-produced drones, Western-supplied cruise missiles, and commando raids, Ukraine has struck a series of high value targets in Crimea including Russian air defense systems, communications outposts, transport hubs, airfields, and ammunition stores. A number of strikes have reportedly targeted senior Russian officers. The growing frequency of these Ukrainian offensive operations in Crimea has made a mockery of earlier Russian attempts to claim that any attacks on the occupied peninsula represented a “red line” for the Kremlin.

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Some of Ukraine’s recent attacks on the Crimean front have been spectacular enough to garner international headlines. In mid-September, Ukraine struck a warship and submarine while they underwent repair works in the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s home port of Sevastopol. According to an intelligence update by Britain’s Ministry of Defense, the Minsk landing ship was “almost certainly functionally destroyed” in the attack, while the Kilo class Rostov-on-Don submarine “likely suffered catastrophic damage.” Furthermore, the task of removing wreckage from the dry docks in Sevastopol will likely take months, creating major challenges for fleet maintenance.

Ukraine went even further on September 22, launching an audacious daylight attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the heart of Sevastopol. This resulted in a number of direct hits that caused serious damage to the symbolically important building. Ukraine’s success was a major embarrassment for Putin, exposing the ineffectiveness of Russia’s air defenses and underlining the vulnerability of the Black Sea Fleet. In a sure sign of Moscow’s extreme displeasure, the Kremlin-controlled Russian state media initially ignored the humiliating attack entirely.

The steady depletion of Russia’s air defenses on the Crimean peninsula in recent months may be an indication of Ukraine’s future intentions. With the skies over occupied Crimea increasingly undefended, Ukraine will likely seek to expand attacks on Crimean transport and munitions hubs that are critically important for the Russian war effort in southern Ukraine. This could deprive Russian forces of resupply at a critical moment in the fighting along the front lines in Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

While the situation for Russia’s occupation forces in Crimea is not yet critical, the outlook is far from promising. Reports following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent White House meeting with US President Joe Biden indicate that the United States is now preparing to supply Ukraine with ATACMS cruise missiles for the first time, though the exact range is yet to be announced. The delivery of ATACMS missiles would enable the Ukrainian military to strike targets throughout Crimea. Ukraine is also developing powerful new underwater drones that will significantly increase the threat to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. At this point, there can be little doubt that Ukraine is ultimately aiming to make Crimea untenable for the Russian military.

Ukraine has also seized the initiative at sea, using innovative naval drones to target Russian warships and other shipping. In early August, a Ukrainian naval drone attack seriously damaged the Russian landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak in the eastern Black Sea close to the Russian naval base at Novorossiisk. The attack highlighted Ukraine’s ability to hit targets hundreds of miles from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled coastline. Numerous smaller Russian warships have also reportedly been damaged in similar attacks during the past few months.

This unfolding campaign against the Russian naval presence in the Black Sea is crucial for Kyiv’s efforts to unblock Ukraine’s southern ports and reopen an economic lifeline for the country’s maritime trade to global markets. In defiance of Russia’s naval blockade, the Ukrainian authorities announced the launch of a new shipping corridor in August that runs down the western shoreline of the Black Sea from the port city of Odesa. The viability of this corridor hinges on Ukraine’s ability to deter Russian warships from intervening. By September 26, seven vessels had sailed from Odesa via the new sea route.

Ukraine’s increasingly ambitious offensive operations on the Crimean peninsula and in the Black Sea are part of a far larger counteroffensive picture. In parallel to the attacks being carried out on the Crimean front, Ukraine is also hitting targets with increasing regularity inside Russia itself.

Drone strikes in Moscow have become an almost daily occurrence in recent months, forcing the Russian military to withdraw limited air defense systems from the front lines in Ukraine in order to redeploy them in the Russian capital. Suspected Ukrainian drone activity has also repeatedly forced Moscow’s international airports to shut down, causing economic damage and providing the Russian public with a taste of wartime disruption. More significantly, a series of drone attacks on airfields deep inside Russia have led to the destruction of multiple warplanes.

Ukrainian commanders recognize that today’s complex attrition tactics will only get them so far, and are well aware that they must eventually break through Russia’s defenses and liberate their entire country if they wish to secure a meaningful peace. Nevertheless, any analysis of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive is incomplete without an awareness of the broader attrition campaign that is currently underway far from the relatively static front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine. The pace of the Ukrainian advance remains slow, but developments elsewhere may prove equally important in determining the future course of the war.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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