World News

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), on Wednesday elected former Lagos State governor Bola Tinubu as its candidate to run for president in elections scheduled for February 2023.

President Muhammadu Buhari steps down next year after leading Africa’s most populous country and top oil exporter for the maximum eight years allowed by the constitution.

Tinubu, 70, who was in charge of Nigeria’s commercial capital from 1999 to 2007, defeated 13 other candidates including Buhari’s deputy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, in the APC primaries.

Tinubu’s supporters erupted into song and dance at Eagle Square, an outdoor parade ground in the capital Abuja where the voting took place.

A wily political operator, Tinubu built a strong support base during his eight years as governor of Lagos. Since stepping down, he has remained highly influential, with many of his loyal proteges in powerful positions in government and business.

Supporters portray him as an effective administrator with a knack for picking bright, committed technocrats to get jobs done.

Critics denounce him as a godfather figure who doles out lucrative contracts and plum jobs to his friends and is not above sending out street thugs to intimidate opponents if he fails to get his way. He rejects that description.

(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and James Macharia Chege)

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TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisian lawyers and judges held a small protest outside the capital’s courts Wednesday as part of their weeklong strike following the president’s dismissal of 57 judges.

President Kais Saied’s removal of the judges was the latest sign of growing interference in the judiciary as he tightens his grip on power. Critics accused Saied of staging a coup in July 2021 after he sacked the government and took on executive powers.

Dozens of lawyers and activists gathered on the steps of the Palace of Justice in Tunis to denounce Saied’s actions. Some shouted “Down with the coup,” and others chanted, “Judicial authority, no police orders.”

Several lawyers told The Associated Press they would continue their opposition to the president’s actions, which include ditching Tunisia’s 2014 constitution to rule instead by decree.

Last week, Saied justified his actions by listing a long series of accusations with scant evidence against dozens of judges, ranging from alleged corruption and the illegal amassing of wealth to protecting terrorists and sexual harassment.

Hundreds of judges unanimously voted over the weekend to hold a sit-in and strike. They accused the president of ignoring the constitution and removing judges without “recourse to disciplinary procedure.”

Courtrooms across the North African country have been closed since Monday. Anas Hamadi, president of the Association of Tunisian Magistrates, said 99% of judges participated on the first day of the strike. The protest will continue until the dismissed jurists are reinstated, Hamadi said.

In response, Saied ordered judges’ salaries to be reduced in accordance with the number of strike days.

Saied conferred on himself sweeping powers last year, measures the president claimed were needed to “save the country from imminent peril” and to fight widespread corruption.

Earlier this year, he replaced Tunisia’s Supreme Judicial Council. The council had been a key guarantor of judicial independence since the country’s 2011 revolution, which deposed a longtime autocratic leader and introduced democratic reforms.

Under pressure from Tunisia’s allies, who are concerned about democratic backsliding in the country, Saied laid out a roadmap that foresees organizing a July 25 referendum on political reforms and a Dec. 17 parliamentary election.

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BERLIN (AP) — The German government wants to temporarily keep additional coal-fired power plants on stand-by for almost two years to stave off a possible electricity shortage in case natural gas supplies from Russia are suddenly reduced, officials said Wednesday.

Germany is trying to wean itself off Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine, and expects to finish doing so in 2024. But the government fears that Moscow might cut off supplies suddenly in response to the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by Western nations, including Germany.

A draft law agreed by Cabinet would ensure that coal-fired plants previously scheduled for closure remain in functional condition.

Germany already has several other coal and oil-fired plants on stand-by that can be activated in an emergency.

Government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said the decision was important “in light of the Russian attack on Ukraine and the tense situation on the energy markets.”

“The goal of completing the phaseout of coal in Germany ideally by 2030, and the climate targets, remain in place,” she said.

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Follow all AP stories on the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

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Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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BAMAKO (Reuters) -The West African regional bloc ECOWAS said on Tuesday that it regretted a decision by Mali’s interim government to extend the transition back to civilian rule by 24 months while negotiations between the two sides were ongoing.

Mali’s ruling junta, which first came to power in an August 2020 coup, issued a decree on Monday fixing the 24-month timetable, to be counted from March 2022.

The 15-member Economic Community of West African States has been pushing for a shorter extension of at most 16 months. ECOWAS imposed stiff sanctions in January after the junta said it would not organise democratic elections the following month as initially planned.

“ECOWAS regrets that while negotiations are still ongoing to reach a consensus, the Malian Authorities took this decision on the transition,” the bloc said in a statement.

It said an ECOWAS negotiator would continue to engage Malian authorities to reach a “mutually agreed timeline”.

Heads of state from ECOWAS member countries met over the weekend in Ghana, where they agreed not to lift sanctions against Mali unless the junta proposed a shorter transition. They are expected to hold another summit before July 3.

(Reporting by Fadimata Kontao; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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By Daina Beth Solomon, Ted Hesson and Matt Spetalnick

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has pooled $3.2 billion in corporate pledges aimed at addressing some of the economic factors driving migration from Central America, her office said on Tuesday, lending impetus to measures to be discussed at the Summit of the Americas this week.

The new commitments from U.S. companies, including Visa Inc and apparel maker Gap Inc , were announced a day before President Joe Biden formally opens the Los Angeles gathering, which has been marred by controversy over the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Biden’s decision to cut out Washington’s three main leftist antagonists in Latin America on the grounds of human rights and democratic shortcomings prompted Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and several other leaders to stay away, threatening to undercut Biden’s summit agenda.

The corporate pledges form a major part of Biden’s plan to address “root causes” of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, a region known as the Northern Triangle. Curbing irregular migration is a top priority for Biden at a time when record numbers of people are trying to enter the United States at the Mexican border.

Republicans, who hope to take control of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in the November mid-term elections, have fiercely criticized the Democratic president for reversing the restrictive immigration policies of former Republican President Donald Trump.

The latest funding commitments announced by Harris exceed $1.9 billion, adding to $1.2 billion in pledges made in December. They are intended to create jobs, expand access to the internet and bring more people into the formal banking system, officials said.

Biden, who travels to Los Angeles on Wednesday to open the summit with a policy speech, will promote a new economic “partnership” for the Western Hemisphere building on existing trade agreements, U.S. officials said. He also plans to preview a “declaration” to be announced on Friday that officials say will include specific commitments from leaders to address the problem.

Even as he grapples with pressing concerns such as mass shootings, high inflation and the Ukraine war, the Democratic president wants to use the summit to repair Latin America relations damaged under Republican predecessor Trump, and to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

But the dispute over the guest list has raised questions about prospects for meaningful agreements.

U.S. efforts to stem migration from the Northern Triangle have been hampered by corruption, with projects likely worth millions shelved and some private sector engagement stalled.

Further complicating matters, the presidents of Guatemala and Honduras have signaled they will not attend the summit and will instead send other officials. It was unclear whether El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, would attend; the White House’s official guest list shows his foreign minister as head of the delegation.

Several thousand migrants, many from Venezuela, set off from southern Mexico on Monday on a journey to the United States border timed to coincide with the summit.

At least 6,000 people, according to Reuters witnesses, left the city of Tapachula, near Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

CORPORATE PLEDGES

The latest corporate pledges include $270 million from Visa focused on bringing 6.5 million people into the formal banking system, and $150 million from Gap to increase materials sourced from the region.

The other firms span a variety of sectors, including auto parts, agriculture, telecommunications and digital services.

A CEO summit running parallel to the leaders’ gathering could yield commitments for further investment in economically troubled Latin America, which has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and is struggling to recover.

Harris also announced an initiative with the private sector that aims to connect 1.4 million women to the financial system and train more than 500,000 women and girls in job skills.

Despite friction over summit invitations, most leaders in the Americas plan to attend. White House officials insist the controversy will blow over and the event – the first hosted by the United States since the first such gathering in 1994 – will be a success.

But before heading to the summit, Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, in a newspaper op-ed, accused the United States of being “inconsistent, if not contradictory” for refusing to invite Communist-ruled Cuba and leftist-led Venezuela and Nicaragua while engaging with non-democratic governments in other regions such as Southeast Asia.

(Reporting by Daina Solomon and Matt Spetalnick in Los Angeles and Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Dave Graham and Humeyra Pamuk in Los Angeles and Alexandra Valencia in Quito; Editing by Grant McCool and Leslie Adler)

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(Reuters) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday that Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin, the country’s top electoral authority, committed “rape against Brazilian democracy” by meeting with foreign diplomats to brief them on upcoming elections in the country.

Last month, Fachin, head of Brazil’s Electoral Court (TSE), invited international organizations to send observers to monitor the October elections, which Bolsonaro has criticized, asserting that the electronic voting machines are not reliable. His government opposed the invitation of European Union observers.

(Reporting by Carolina Pulice; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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BERLIN (AP) — A Catholic diocese in Germany said Tuesday that a former priest has been convicted in a church trial of sexually abusing a minor over several years almost three decades ago.

The man, who wasn’t identified, was ordered to pay an unspecified fine for the crimes committed between 1986 and 1993, the diocese of Limburg said in statement. It didn’t immediately respond to queries about the amount of the fine.

While financial payouts have been included in confidential settlements between the church and victims of abuse, the announcement of a financial penalty against a priest as a result of a canonical investigation is unusual.

The male victim had filed a complaint about the abuse in 2018 following the publication of a study into sexual abuse within the church.

German prosecutors declined to open an investigation because the alleged crimes had passed the 20-year statute of limitations, but church authorities launched a probe.

After receiving a dossier from the diocese, the Vatican asked it to open criminal proceedings.

The diocese said that the church now considers the man to be a convicted sex offender. It said the man would have been defrocked as part of his conviction, but he left the priesthood during the trial.

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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia denied again Tuesday that it will allow any Chinese military presence at a port where it and China are beginning an expansion this week that has prompted concern in the United States and elsewhere that it will be used by Beijing as a naval outpost on the Gulf of Thailand.

Chief government spokesman Phay Siphan described the expansion of the Ream Naval Base as “cooperation between China and Cambodia” and said the Chinese ambassador to Cambodia will preside over the groundbreaking on Wednesday along with Cambodia’s defense minister and other senior military officials.

He denied, however, a report in the Washington Post newspaper citing an anonymous Chinese official that the facility on the northern side of the Cambodian base would be used in part by the Chinese military.

Siphan said it would be a violation of Cambodia’s Constitution to host a foreign military power, and that there had been no change in the terms of his country’s agreement with China on constructing the facility.

“I think that’s a strong accusation,” he said in a telephone interview.

He would not comment on the extent of the Chinese involvement and said the project involved constructing a facility for repairing ships.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Tuesday said the work would be a “renovation” of the base which “aims to strengthen the Cambodian navy’s capability to maintain maritime territorial integrity and combat maritime crime.”

Ream faces the Gulf of Thailand, adjacent to the South China Sea, where China has aggressively asserted its claim to virtually the entire strategic waterway. The U.S. has refused to recognize China’s sweeping claim and routinely conducts military maneuvers there to reinforce that they are international waters.

A Chinese base in Cambodia could become a chokepoint in the Gulf of Thailand close to the strategically important Malacca Strait.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that allegations China intends to establish a military presence at the Ream base are “consistent with credible reporting we’ve seen from the PRC (People’s Republic of China) that the PRC is engaged in a significant ongoing construction project at Ream Naval Base.”

“As we’ve said, an exclusive PRC military presence at Ream could threaten Cambodia’s autonomy and undermine regional security as well,” he said.

China recently signed a security deal with the Solomon Islands that the U.S. and others worry could lead to a military presence there, and Price noted that Beijing has also reached out to a number of other South Pacific islands.

“We have seen the PRC attempt to put forward a series of shadowy, opaque deals that they would like to see signed in the dead of night with no input or transparency,” he said. “This has been a pattern on the part of the PRC.”

The U.S. itself has more foreign military bases than any other country, including multiple facilities in the Asia-Pacific region.

At a regular Foreign Ministry briefing, Zhao accused the U.S. of “bullying” Cambodia and ignoring its denials that Ream would be used for Chinese military purposes, while noting Washington’s own network of bases around the world.

“China and Cambodia are comprehensive strategic partners, and our cooperation in various fields is open, transparent, reasonable and legitimate, which benefits the two countries,” he said.

China so far operates just one acknowledged foreign military base, in the impoverished but strategically important Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. Many believe that China’s People’s Liberation Army is busy establishing an overseas military network, even if they don’t use the term “base.”

Cambodia’s authoritarian leader, Hun Sen, has long cultivated relations with China, and reportedly signed a secret agreement in 2019 allowing the Chinese to establish a base at Ream.

Though Hun Sen has strongly denied that Cambodia would allow China to set up a military outpost at Ream, China has already been dredging the harbor to allow larger ships to dock, and is building new infrastructure to replace a U.S.-built naval tactical headquarters.

Hun Sen suggested last month that the water would still be too shallow for any warships to dock, and reiterated that it would be a violation of Cambodia’s Constitution to host a Chinese military facility.

“Why would we need foreign forces, for what?” he said. “What Cambodia really needs at the moment is foreign investment, not foreign forces.”

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, established by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, posted satellite images in January of two “clamshell” dredgers at work in the harbor, and said while the extent of the dredging is unknown, it could mark a “significant upgrade” to the base.

“The shallow waters around Ream mean it is currently only able to host small patrol vessels,” it said. “A deep-water port would make it far more useful to both the Cambodian and Chinese navies.”

Newer images from April analyzed by The Associated Press show the dredgers still on site and at work.

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Rising reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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By Elizabeth Piper and Andrew MacAskill

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a confidence vote on Monday but a large rebellion in his Conservative Party over the so-called “partygate” scandal dealt a blow to his authority and leaves him with a struggle to win back broad support.

Johnson, who scored a sweeping election victory in 2019, has been under increasing pressure after he and staff held alcohol-fuelled parties in his Downing Street office and residence when Britain was under strict lockdowns because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He was met with a chorus of jeers and boos, and some muted cheers, at events to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth in recent days.

Several lawmakers said the vote, which saw 211 lawmakers cast ballots in favour of Johnson against 148, was worse than expected for a prime minister, once seemingly unassailable after winning the Conservatives’ largest majority in more than three decades.

“Boris Johnson will be relieved at this vote. But he will also understand that the next priority is to rebuild the cohesion of the party,” David Jones, a former minister, told Reuters. “I am sure he will be equal to the challenge.”

Others were less optimistic, with one Conservative lawmaker saying on condition of anonymity: “It is clearly much worse than most people were expecting. But it is too early to say what will happens now.”

Roger Gale, a long-time critic of Johnson, urged the prime minister “to go back to Downing Street tonight and consider very carefully where he goes from here”.

By winning the confidence vote, Johnson has secured a reprieve for 12 months when lawmakers cannot bring another challenge. But his predecessor Theresa May scored better in her 2018 confidence vote only to resign six months later.

Johnson said after the vote that was not interested in holding a snap national election.

“I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that I think really matters to people,” he told reporters.

Dozens of Conservative lawmakers have voiced concern over whether Johnson, 57, has lost his authority to govern Britain, which is facing the risk of recession, rising fuel and food prices and strike-inflicted travel chaos in the capital London.

But his Cabinet rallied around him and highlighted what they said were the successes of the government: a quick rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations and Britain’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

(GRAPHIC-Johnson vs May: confidence votes compared: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/polling/myvmnwlgrpr/Pasted%20image%201654547616367.png)

DRAW A LINE?

A majority of the Conservatives’ lawmakers – at least 180 – would have had to vote against Johnson for him to be removed.

Earlier, a spokesperson for Johnson’s Downing Street office said the vote would “allow the government to draw a line and move on” and that the prime minister welcomed the opportunity to make his case to lawmakers.

Johnson, a former London mayor, rose to power at Westminster as the face of the Brexit campaign in a 2016 referendum, and won the 2019 election with the slogan to “get Brexit done”.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexit opportunities minister, told Sky News that completing Britain’s departure from the European Union would be “significantly at risk without his drive and energy”.

Johnson has locked horns with Brussels over Northern Ireland, raising the prospect of more barriers for British trade and alarming leaders in Ireland, Europe and the United States about risks to the province’s 1998 peace deal.

But it was the months of stories of what went on in Downing Street, including fights and alcohol-induced vomiting, when many people were prevented from saying goodbye to loved ones at funerals, that did the real damage.

The move led to lawmakers from different wings of the party revealing that they had turned against their leader. One former ally accused the prime minister of insulting both the electorate and the party by staying in power.

“You have presided over a culture of casual law-breaking at 10 Downing Street in relation to COVID,” Jesse Norman, a former junior minister, said before the vote.

Johnson’s anti-corruption chief John Penrose also quit.

(Additional reporting by David Milliken, William James, Alistair Smout, Farouq Suleiman and Helena Williams; Editing by William Schomberg and Grant McCool)

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LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that his victory in a confidence vote, when 41% of his lawmakers voted against him, was a convincing and decisive win that would enable the country to move on.

Having scored a sweeping election victory in 2019, the prime minister has been under mounting pressure after he and staff held alcohol-fuelled parties in his Downing Street office and residence when Britain was under strict COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that I think really matters to people,” he told reporters.

“We can focus on what we’re doing to help people with the cost of living, what we’re doing to clear the COVID backlogs, what we’re doing to make streets and communities safer by putting more police out,” he said.

“It gives us the opportunity to continue to unite, to level up, and to strengthen our economy.”

He also said he was not interested in holding a snap national election, which some had suggested may be his next move to attempt to reassert his authority.

“I’m certainly not interested in snap elections, what I’m interested in is delivering right now for the people of this country,” he said.

(Reporting by William James and Farouq Suleiman; Editing by Kate Holton)

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