12092018 - APC PRIMARIES: Gov kick against conditions for consensus candidate

44 — VANGUARD, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
Russia starts biggest war games since
Soviet fall near China
RUSSIA began its
biggest war games
since the fall of the Soviet
Union on Tuesday close to its
border with China,
mobilising 300,000 troops in
a show of force that will
include joint exercises with
the Chinese army.
China and Russia have
staged joint drills before but
not on such a large scale, and
the Vostok-2018 (East-2018)
exercise signals closer
military ties as well as
sending an unspoken
reminder to Beijing that
Moscow is able and ready
to defend its sparsely
populated far east.
Vostok-2018 is taking place
at a time of heightened
tension between the West
and Russia, and NATO has
said it will monitor the
exercise closely, as will the
United States which has a
strong military presence in
the Asia-Pacific region.
Russia’s Ministry of
Defence broadcast images
on Tuesday of columns of
tanks, armoured vehicles
and warships on the move,
and combat helicopters and
fighter aircraft taking off.
In one clip, marines from
Russia’s Northern Fleet and
a motorised Arctic brigade
were shown disembarking
from a large landing ship on
a barren shore opposite
Alaska.
This activity was part of the
first stage of the exercise,
which runs until Sept. 17, the
ministry said in a statement.
It involved deploying
additional forces to Russia’s
far east and a naval build-up
involving its Northern and
Pacific fleets.
The main aim was to check
the military’s readiness to
move troops large distances,
to test how closely infantry
and naval forces cooperated,
and to perfect command and
control procedures. Later
stages will involve rehearsals
of both defensive and
offensive scenarios.
Russia also staged a major
naval exercise in the eastern
Mediterranean this month
and its jets resumed
bombing the Syrian region
of Idlib, the last major
enclave of rebels fighting its
ally President Bashar al-
Assad.
The location of the main
training range for Vostok-
2018 5,000 km (3,000 miles)
east of Moscow means it is
likely to be watched closely
by Japan, North and South
Korea as well as by China
and Mongolia, both of whose
armies will take part in the
manoeuvres later this week.
Analysts say Moscow had
to invite the Chinese and
Mongolian militaries given
the proximity of the war
games to their borders and
because the scale meant the
neighbouring countries
would probably have seen
them as a threat had they
been excluded.
Pope to meet US Church leaders after archbishop’s
accusations *As Trump marks 9/11 anniversary memorial
POPE Francis will meet
on Thursday with U.S.
Catholic Church leaders
who want to discuss the
fallout from a scandal
involving a former American
cardinal and demands from
an archbishop that the
pontiff step down.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo,
president of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic
Bishops (USCCB), asked
for the meeting after
Archbishop Carlo Maria
Vigano last month accused
the pope of knowing for
years about sexual
misconduct by former
Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick and of doing
nothing about it.
The Vatican said in a
statement the pope would
meet on Thursday with
DiNardo, Cardinal Sean
Patrick O’Malley of Boston,
and two USCCB officials.
In the 11-page statement
published on Aug. 26,
Vigano, the former Vatican
ambassador to Washington,
launched an unprecedented
broadside by a Church
insider against the pope and
a long list of Vatican and
U.S. Church officials.
A U.S. flag that flew over the World Trade Center is presented during
ceremonies at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum yesterday in New
York. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
DiNardo has said Vigano’s
accusations “deserve
answers that are conclusive
and based on evidence”.
The accusations shook the
U.S. Church, following a
damning Grand Jury report
in the state of Pennsylvania
that found that 301 priests in
the state had sexually abused
minors over the past 70
years.
Di Nardo has called for
the Vatican to help with an
investigation into how
McCarrick could have
risen steadily through the
ranks of the U.S. Church
although many people
knew that he had engaged
for years in sexual
misconduct with adult male
seminarians.
Meanwhile, US President
Donald Trump and First
Lady Melania Trump have
visited a memorial in
Pennsylvania to mark the 9/
11 attacks 17 years ago.
Global hunger increasing, UN warns
THE number of people
suffering from hunger
has increased during the past
three years, after years of
decline, a UN report suggests.
According to the analysis,
821 million people globally
were undernourished in 2017
- about one person in every
nine.
And nearly 151 million
under-fives - 22% of the global
total - have their growth
stunted by poor nutrition.
The authors say extreme
climate events are partly to
blame for the rise and call for
urgent global action.
The report, The State of Food
Security and Nutrition in the
World, also says difficulties
accessing nutritious food is
contributing to the growing
problem of obesity in the
world, with one in eight
adults - more than 672
million - being classified as
obese.
The authors note the
frequency of extreme climate
events - floods, heat, storms
and droughts - has doubled
since the early 1990s.
And they say: “The report
sends a clear message that
climate variability and
exposure to more complex,
frequent and intense climate
extremes are threatening to
erode and even reverse the
gains made in ending
hunger and malnutrition.”
Climate extremes have a
direct impact on crop yields
and food availability but can
also reduce the number of fit
and healthy people available
to grow and harvest crops
and the time and money
people have to find nutritious
and safe food
And hunger is significantly
worse in countries where
agricultural systems are
sensitive to variations in
rainfall and temperature and
where many people depend
on agriculture for their
livelihoods.
The authors say: “Climate
variability and extremes - in
addition to conflict and
violence in this part of the
world - are a key driver
behind the recent rises in
global hunger and one of the
leading causes of severe food
crises.”
As Sweden swings right, Bannon’s
anti-EU crusade looks north
HAVING found an ally in the south and an adm
i r e r
in the east, Donald Trump’s former political strategist
Steve Bannon is now looking north for recruits in
his crusade to undermine the European Union.
And he believes the timing is perfect after famously
liberal Sweden voted in record numbers on Sunday for a
far-right party that wants a referendum on leaving the
28-nation bloc.
Bannon, who helped put U.S. President Trump in the
White House, wants to pull off a similar antiestablishment
revolution in the EU and get eurosceptics
from all corners of the union voted into the European
Parliament at elections next year.
He has already signed up Italy’s most prominent
eurosceptic leader, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, to
the cause and his project has been praised by another
fierce EU critic, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Bannon is now turning to the EU’s northern member
states, where his latest admirer is Dutch nationalist Geert
Wilders. “Sometimes you need a catalyst,” Wilders told
Reuters at the annual Ambrosetti Forum conference on
the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, where he called for the
Catalan separatists demand split
from Spain in Bercalona
AROUND one million people filled central Barcelona
on Tuesday to celebrate Catalonia’s commemorative
day and boost a bid for independence which has left deep
divisions almost a year after it brought Spain to a
constitutional crisis.
The huge turnout, estimated by local police, was a
response to a call from Catalan regional president Quim
Torra and his predecessor Carles Puigdemont, who fled
to Brussels last October after Madrid dismissed his
government, to show continued support for independence
from Spain.
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who took office
in June, has taken a more conciliatory approach than his
conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy but has stood
firm against a vote on or move towards independence.
Watching Tuesday’s protest on the broad avenue that
slices diagonally through Barcelona, 59-year-old
psychologist Montse Martin said the movement needed
to regain momentum.
“Let’s see if from today there will be a turning point and
we will be able to move forward,” she said. “We have to
get down to work and not focus so much on what has
happened, as serious as it was, but look to the future.”
The Sept. 11 “Diada” celebration marks the fall of
Barcelona to Spain in 1714, and has been adopted by
independence activists in recent years.
It falls just over a year after Puigdemont’s administration
held a referendum which Madrid sent riot police to try to
stop, and made a unilateral declaration of independence.
Newspaper backs racist
Serena cartoon
AN Australian newspaper which found itself at the
centre of a race row over its cartoonist’s depiction of
Serena Williams has doubled down on its support for the
artist.
The Herald Sun has hit out at those who criticised Mark
Knight’s drawing, which shows Williams jumping over a
broken racquet next to a baby’s dummy.
Critics said the cartoon used racist and sexist
stereotypes.
But that did not stop the newspaper reprinting the image
on its front page.
Underneath the headline “Welcome to PC world”, the
newspaper wrote: “If the self-appointed censors of Mark
Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our
new politically correct life will be very dull indeed”.
South African artist defends
‘Nazi Mandela’ work
ASouth African artist has defended his controversial
work which depicts anti-apartheid leader Nelson
Mandela doing a Nazi salute.
Ayanda Mabulu’s piece drew criticism after it was briefly
displayed at a Johannesburg art-fair.
A former president, Mr Mandela is a much-loved figure
in South Africa, credited with ending white-minority rule.
Mabulu said that he was speaking on behalf of poor
black South Africans.
“Mandela failed to deliver the dream and that makes
him an equivalent of Hitler,” he told the BBC.
The piece, showing Mr Mandela superimposed on a
German Nazi flag, was reportedly taken down at the
FNB Joburg Art Fair as it was deemed insensitive.
According to local media, Mabulu caught the event’s
organisers off-guard as he was not set to showcase his
work at the fair.