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World<br />
FBI records: Effort to reduce<br />
Clinton email classification<br />
20 DAYS REMAIN<br />
• Reuters, New York<br />
100-plus Chibuk girls unwilling to leave Boko Haram<br />
• Tribune International Desk<br />
Nigeria’s government is negotiating<br />
the release of another 83 of the<br />
Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass<br />
abduction two-and-a-half years<br />
ago, but more than 100 others appear<br />
unwilling to leave their Boko<br />
Haram Islamic extremist captors,<br />
a community leader said Tuesday,<br />
reports The Associated Press.<br />
The unwilling girls may have<br />
been radicalised by Boko Haram<br />
or are ashamed to return home<br />
because they were forced to marry<br />
extremists and have babies, chairman<br />
Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development<br />
Association said.<br />
Bitrus said the 21 Chibok girls<br />
freed last week in the first negotiated<br />
release between Nigeria’s<br />
government and Boko Haram<br />
should be educated abroad, because<br />
they will probably face stigma<br />
in Nigeria.<br />
The girls and their parents were<br />
reunited Sunday and are expected<br />
to meet with Nigeria’s President<br />
A senior State Department official<br />
sought to shield Hillary Clinton last<br />
year by pressuring the FBI to drop<br />
its insistence that an email on the<br />
private server she used while secretary<br />
of state contained classified<br />
information, according to records<br />
of interviews with FBI officials released<br />
on Monday.<br />
The accusation against Patrick<br />
Kennedy, the State Department’s<br />
most senior manager, appears in<br />
the latest release of interview summaries<br />
from the Federal Bureau of<br />
Investigation’s year-long investigation<br />
into Clinton’s sending and<br />
receiving classified government secrets<br />
via her unauthorised server.<br />
Although the FBI decided<br />
against declassifying the email’s<br />
contents, the claim of interference<br />
added fuel to Republicans’<br />
belief that officials in President<br />
Barack Obama’s administration<br />
have sought to protect Clinton, a<br />
Democrat, from criminal liability<br />
as she seeks to succeed Obama in<br />
the November 8 election. The FBI<br />
recommended against bringing any<br />
charges in July and has defended<br />
the integrity of its investigation.<br />
Clinton has said her decision to<br />
use a private server in her home<br />
for her work as the US secretary of<br />
state from 2009 to 2013 was a mistake<br />
and has apologised.<br />
The dispute began in the summer<br />
of 2015 as officials were busy<br />
reviewing the roughly 30,000<br />
emails Clinton returned to the<br />
State Department ahead of their<br />
court-ordered public release in<br />
batches in 2015 and <strong>2016</strong>.<br />
The official said the State Department’s<br />
office of legal counsel<br />
called him to question the FBI’s<br />
ruling that the information was<br />
classified, but the FBI stood by its<br />
decision.<br />
Soon after that call, one of the<br />
official’s FBI colleagues received a<br />
call from Kennedy in which Kennedy<br />
“asked his assistance in altering<br />
the email’s classification in<br />
exchange for a ‘quid pro quo.’”<br />
The FBI official said he also<br />
joined at least two discussions<br />
in which Kennedy “continued to<br />
pressure” the FBI about the email.<br />
The official said Kennedy appeared<br />
to be trying to protect Clinton by<br />
minimising the appearance of classified<br />
information in emails from<br />
the server that Clinton used while<br />
she was the country’s most senior<br />
diplomat.<br />
Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday<br />
or Wednesday, Bitrus said. Buhari<br />
flew to Germany on an official visit<br />
the day of the girls’ release.<br />
Some 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped<br />
from a school in northeastern<br />
Chibok in April 2014. Dozens<br />
escaped early on and at least<br />
half a dozen have died in captivity,<br />
according to the newly freed<br />
girls, Bitrus said.<br />
All those who escaped on<br />
their own have left Chibok because,<br />
even though they were<br />
held only a few hours, they were<br />
labelled “Boko Haram wives”<br />
and taunted, he said. At least 20<br />
of the girls are being educated in<br />
the United States.<br />
Human rights advocates and<br />
the Bring Back Our Girls Movement<br />
have been asking if the girl<br />
is a detainee of the government<br />
and have been demanding she be<br />
allowed to return home, as she has<br />
requested.<br />
Previous negotiators in talks<br />
that failed also had corroborated<br />
Trump calls it collusion<br />
Other officials have made similar<br />
complaints to investigators of unusual<br />
pressure not to mark information<br />
as classified in Clinton’s emails<br />
last year. According to earlier documents<br />
the FBI released last month,<br />
at least one official at the State Department<br />
told investigators that<br />
there was pressure by senior department<br />
officials to mislead the<br />
public about the presence of classified<br />
information in Clinton’s emails<br />
ahead of their public release.<br />
A summary released on Monday<br />
showed at least two other State Department<br />
officials making similar<br />
allegations.<br />
Clinton’s Republican rival for<br />
the White House, Donald Trump,<br />
posted a video online on Monday<br />
in which he said the FBI documents<br />
showed “corruption at the<br />
highest levels.”<br />
“This is collusion between the<br />
FBI, Department of Justice and the<br />
State Department to try and make<br />
Hillary Clinton look like an innocent<br />
person when she’s guilty of<br />
very high crimes,” Trump said.<br />
Later on Monday, Trump proposed<br />
a series of ethics rules he<br />
said would crack down on government<br />
corruption, including a fiveyear<br />
ban on former administration<br />
officials lobbying after leaving<br />
government and a lifetime ban on<br />
senior officials lobbying for foreign<br />
governments.<br />
Paul Ryan, the top elected Republican<br />
in the US Congress, referred<br />
to the FBI summaries on<br />
Twitter. “This bears all the signs of<br />
a cover-up,” he wrote.<br />
In 2015, Clinton repeatedly said<br />
she never sent or received classified<br />
information via her server, but<br />
since the release of the FBI report<br />
in July she has said she relied on<br />
the judgement of her subordinates<br />
at the department. •<br />
Find more stories on US presidential<br />
election at www.dhakatribune.com<br />
NIGERIA 2014 KIDNAPPING<br />
NIGER<br />
BORNO<br />
Maiduguri<br />
Sambisa Forest reserve<br />
ABUJA<br />
CAMEROON<br />
200 km<br />
Chibok<br />
Journalists shower<br />
Clinton with<br />
campaign cash<br />
• Tribune International Desk<br />
New Yorker television critic Emily<br />
Nussbaum, a newly minted<br />
Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the<br />
Republican National Convention<br />
pen-pricking presidential nominee<br />
Donald Trump as a misogynist<br />
shyster running an “ugly<br />
and xenophobic campaign.”<br />
What Nussbaum didn’t disclose<br />
in her dispatches: she<br />
contributed $250 to Democrat<br />
Hillary Clinton in April.<br />
In all, people identified in<br />
federal campaign finance filings<br />
as journalists, reporters,<br />
news editors or television news<br />
anchors — as well as other donors<br />
known to be working in<br />
journalism — have combined<br />
to give more than $396,000 to<br />
the presidential campaigns of<br />
Clinton and Trump, according<br />
to a Center for Public Integrity<br />
analysis.<br />
Nearly all of that money —<br />
more than 96% — has benefited<br />
Clinton: About 430 people<br />
who work in journalism have,<br />
through August, combined<br />
to give about $382,000 to the<br />
Democratic nominee, the<br />
Center for Public Integrity’s<br />
analysis indicates. •<br />
Banki<br />
April 14, 2014<br />
Boko Haram jihadists<br />
seize 276 schoolgirls<br />
57 of them escaped,<br />
leaving 2<strong>19</strong> captured<br />
May 18, <strong>2016</strong><br />
Nigerian army confirms<br />
one of the kidnapped<br />
girls has been found in<br />
Sambisa Forest area<br />
<strong>October</strong> 13, <strong>2016</strong><br />
Nigerian officials<br />
announce release of<br />
21 girls after talks<br />
between government<br />
and Boko Haram<br />
that more than 100 of the girls did<br />
not want to return to their parents,<br />
Bitrus said.<br />
Chibok is a small and conservative<br />
Christian enclave in mainly<br />
Muslim northern Nigeria, where<br />
many parents are involved in<br />
translating the Bible into local languages<br />
and belong to the Nigerian<br />
branch of the Elgin, Illinois-based<br />
Church of the Brethren.<br />
Nigeria’s government has denied<br />
reports that the girls were<br />
swapped for four Boko Haram<br />
commanders, or that a large ransom<br />
was paid. •<br />
9<br />
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER <strong>19</strong>, <strong>2016</strong><br />
DT<br />
USA<br />
Trump’s charity stops<br />
fundraising in New York<br />
state<br />
Donald Trump’s charitable foundation<br />
has stopped fundraising in<br />
New York state, the state attorney<br />
general’s office said on Monday,<br />
weeks after the office warned that a<br />
failure to do so would constitute a<br />
continuing fraud. The organisation<br />
has been under increased scrutiny<br />
following reports in the Washington<br />
Post suggesting possible improprieties<br />
within the small-scale<br />
nonprofit organisation. REUTERS<br />
THE AMERICAS<br />
Venezuela court raises<br />
new obstacle to recall<br />
vote<br />
Venezuela’s Supreme Court has<br />
raised another obstacle to an opposition<br />
drive for a referendum on<br />
recalling leftist President Nicolas<br />
Maduro, who is blamed for a deepening<br />
economic and political crisis.<br />
In a ruling Monday the Supreme<br />
Court raised the bar even higher by<br />
making it 20% of the electorate in<br />
each of the country’s 24 states in<br />
order to force a recall vote. AFP<br />
UK<br />
Police probe rape allegation<br />
inside UK parliament<br />
British police are investigating an<br />
allegation of rape at the Houses<br />
of Parliament against an aide to a<br />
Conservative Party MP, the politician’s<br />
spokesman said on Tuesday.<br />
London’s Metropolitan Police on<br />
Monday announced an investigation<br />
into the alleged rape which is<br />
said to have occurred in the early<br />
hours of <strong>October</strong> 14. AFP<br />
EUROPE<br />
Spain to decide on<br />
enabling new government<br />
The leadership of Spain’s Socialists<br />
meet on Sunday to decide whether<br />
to enable their conservative rivals<br />
to form a minority government,<br />
thereby ending ten months of political<br />
deadlock. With just under two<br />
weeks to go until a deadline to form<br />
a government, the Socialist gathering<br />
is widely seen as a make-or-break<br />
summit that will determine whether<br />
Spain will manage to avoid its third<br />
general election in a year. REUTERS<br />
AFRICA<br />
Inter-ethnic violence kills<br />
dozen in Congo<br />
More than a dozen people have died<br />
since the weekend in fighting in<br />
southeastern Congo between Bantus<br />
and Pygmies. The Luba, a Bantu<br />
ethnic group, and the Twa, a Pygmy<br />
people who inhabit the Great Lakes<br />
region, have been in conflict since<br />
May 2013 in Democratic Republic of<br />
Congo’s Katanga region, known for<br />
its rich deposits of copper and other<br />
metals. REUTERS