Corruption pushing African youth to emigrate: Poll
North America is their top destination, followed by the UK, France, Germany and Spain in Western Europe. Nearly 60 percent of young Africans want to leave their countries because their governments are not reining in corruption, according to a new poll of youth across 16 African nations. They cited corruption as the biggest obstacle to progress, according to the 2024 African Youth Survey published on Tuesday. The poll commissioned by the Johannesburg-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation surveyed 5,604 people between the ages of 18 and 24 in Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. Eighty-three percent of them said they are concerned about corruption at home, and 62 percent believe the government is failing to address it. The poll showed nearly 58 percent of young people saying they are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to consider emigrating to another country in the next three years. “Concern is widespread across different spheres, including national and local governments, businesses, and police forces,” said the survey, conducted via face-to-face interviews in January and February. “They want tougher sanctions against corrupt politicians, including banning them from standing for office,” the foundation said. More than half, or 55 percent, of those polled said Africa was headed in the “wrong direction”, although there was a modest rise to 37 percent in “Afro-optimism” from the 2022 survey. Young Africans looking to emigrate favoured North America as their top destination, followed by Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Spain. Foreign influence In addition to corruption at home, 72 percent of those polled also worried about the negative effect of foreign influence. “They are concerned about their countries being exploited by foreign companies especially their natural mineral wealth being mined and exported without any further benefit to the people,” said the foundation. Nevertheless, 82 percent had positive views about the influence of China, whose Belt and Road Initiative has spawned massive infrastructure projects across the continent. Members of the Chinese honour guard walk past as Mali’s interim President Assimi Goita arrives in Beijing for the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), on September 1 [Ken Ishii/Pool via Reuters] Seventy-nine percent viewed the influence of the United States positively, with 41 percent saying it provides “important loans and economic support”. Most said a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential election in November would be a far worse outcome for Africa than a win by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Perceptions of Russian influence increased, notably in Malawi and South Africa, with more than half of those with a positive view of Russia citing its provision of grain and fertiliser. However, a significant number of youths – 30 percent – view Russian influence negatively, mostly due to “detrimental impacts on African countries caused by Russia’s engagement in conflicts”, said the survey. Africa is home to nearly 420 million youth aged 15-35, one-third of whom are unemployed, the African Development Bank says. It has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population, with it expected to double to more than 830 million by 2050. Adblock test (Why?)
Video: Red Poncho protesters in Bolivia clash with police
NewsFeed Members of Bolivian social movement the Red Ponchos broke through a line of police in riot gear who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, during protests over the state of the country’s economy. Published On 3 Sep 20243 Sep 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
Chhattisgarh: 9 Naxals killed in encounter with forces, automatic weapons recovered
All security force personnel involved in the operation are said to be safe. Search operations are continuing in the area. A detailed report will be released after the completion of the operation.
Over 200 residents at Noida’s Supertech Eco Village fall sick after…, know what exactly happened
Over 200 residents at Supertech Society Eco Village 2 in Noida fell sick, and displayed symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.
Trump focus on inflation, jobs can make inroads with Black voters, Chicago Republican leader says
FIRST ON FOX: Abortion is not a primary issue on the ballot for Black voters this election, according to Chicago Southside Republicans Chair Devin Jones. Instead, he said, Black voters – particularly men – are much more concerned about financial opportunities and entrepreneurship. “I think if the Trump campaign definitely hit harder on the issues that specifically impact the Black community, for instance, inflation, which has made it harder to afford basic necessities, I think there is a jobs crisis, unemployment and an entrepreneurship crisis in the Black community,” Jones told Fox News Digital in an interview. “And so if there were surrogates who specifically outlined policies that talked about those things and directed it to the Black community.” Former President Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, hopes to earn more of the Black vote in what is turning out to be a neck and neck race against Vice President Harris, the Democrat nominee, and has previously said he’s growing in popularity among Black men. PRO-LIFERS BLAST TRUMP ‘BETRAYAL’ WITH SHIFTING ABORTION STANCE, ANSWER ON FLORIDA AMENDMENT 4 During Trump’s first term, he championed several initiatives aimed at Black voters, including opportunity zones and funding historically black colleges. “This is a very progressive area,” Jones said of Chicago. “And a lot of our issues, as far as joblessness, the housing crisis, the lack of entrepreneurship opportunities, is because of a state and local government that produces heavy regulation, heavy taxation, which means that there’s less opportunity. So, I think if he could speak to how at the federal level he would be a partner to us as we fight against local overreach, that would go a long way to capturing kind of those on the fence and even some Black Democrats.” Jones also said when he’s talking to people on the ground, he doesn’t normally “hear people talking about abortion like that,” even though the issue of abortion has been catapulted in recent weeks to the spotlight for both the Democrat and Republican platforms. HARRIS REPEATS DEBUNKED CLAIM TRUMP WANTS TO ‘BAN’ ABORTION DURING FIRST CAMPAIGN RALLY SINCE BIDEN QUIT RACE “Abortion is an issue because the vast majority of abortions are because of financial issues,” Jones said. “So, if you remedy the lack of economic opportunity and ability to provide for families, you will see a decrease in abortion,” Jones said. “Now me, personally, I would like to see President Trump and any Republican have a hard line stance against abortion.” Trump’s latest – and clearest – comments about Florida’s Amendment 4, which would upend the state’s ban on abortions after six weeks’ gestation and enshrine a constitutional right to abortion in the state, may blunt some of the criticism he’s received from pro-life advocates. After Trump made remarks on Thursday that appeared to indicate he might back the amendment, he told Fox News Channel’s Bryan Llenas on Friday afternoon: “I’ll be voting ‘no.’” JD VANCE VOWS TRUMP WOULD NOT IMPOSE FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, VETO IT IF IT COMES ACROSS HIS DESK Florida voters will have the final say on Amendment 4 at the polls in November. Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Harris’ foreign policy record gives insight to goals: Getting tough on Saudi Arabia and renewing Iran deal
Saudi Arabia and its partners in the region may have a fraught relationship with the U.S. if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency, experts say. As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris was highly critical of the kingdom after the killing of journalist Jamaal Khashoggi and backed a 2019 Senate bill demanding a public report on it. And in response to a 2019 questionnaire from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Harris called the Saudis “strong partners,” but said the U.S. needed to “fundamentally reevaluate our relationship” and “us[e] our leverage to stand up for American values and interests.” She also expressed outright opposition to weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. President Biden approved a massive, multibillion-dollar arms deal with the Saudis in 2022, then paused offensive weapons sales to the nation until earlier this month. “We need to end U.S. support for the catastrophic Saudi-led war in Yemen,” Harris said in response to CFR. EX-OBAMA OFFICIAL PREDICTS HARRIS WILL SEEK NEW NUCLEAR IRAN DEAL “The last thing we should do is sell them billions in weapons,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in June 2019. While running for election, Biden promised to reevaluate U.S.-Saudi ties over the Khashoggi killing, but upon taking the presidency, reached a truce with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a way to counter the growing threat of Iran. His administration has long been pushing for several agreements to bolster the U.S.-Saudi relationship: defense guarantees, civil nuclear cooperation and a historic bilateral agreement to normalize relations between the Kingdom and Israel. “The Biden administration has been pretty on top of the relationship with Saudi Arabia in terms of supplying it with necessary weapons to defend the region against Iranian aggression,” Gerard Fillitti, senior counsel at the international Jewish human rights group Lawfare Project, told Fox News Digital. “Joe Biden did understand very well the intricacies of the Saudi involvement in Yemen,” he went on. “It’s less clear that Kamala Harris understands that relationship and the need to bulk up Saudi Arabia as a buffer to Iranian intervention and military expeditions in the region using its proxies.” Prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, the Biden administration made the deal a top Middle East priority. Negotiations seemed to be nearing their end with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan visiting Riyadh multiple times. But since that point, chances of the agreement materializing before the election have dissipated; sticking points remain due to the war in Gaza. A Harris-Walz administration may even “turn a blind eye” to Iran’s abuses in favor of diplomacy talks aimed at denuclearization, according to Middle East experts. “The single biggest threat to the Saudis is Iran,” Filitti told Fox News Digital. “She’ll be more open to negotiating with Iran. And let’s remember, any time people have negotiated Iran, it has not ended well.” “America’s partners and allies in the region have concerns that a Harris administration would be much more lenient towards Iran’s regional activity compared to a Trump administration,” Firas Maksad, senior director at the Middle East Institute, told Fox News Digital. Harris, in her 2019 response to CFR, said she favored rejoining the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear programs. “President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from an agreement that was verifiably preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — against the warnings of our closest allies, and without any plan for what comes next — was beyond reckless,” she said. Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018, arguing it was too weak to restrain the Iranian regime’s nuclear aspirations, calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” Former President Obama and his allies had agreed to the deal and saw it as a necessary compromise to bring Tehran to the negotiating table. Maksad predicted that Harris would try to rewrite the Iran nuclear deal. “The Iranians have said that that deal is dead. It will have to be renegotiated from scratch for various technical reasons… but I do expect that a Harris administration would invest much more time and effort in diplomacy with Iran and be willing to look the other way as Iran goes about its nefarious activities throughout the region in favor of prioritizing a deal on the nuclear program,” he said. After the supreme leader of Iran signaled a willingness to return to nuclear negotiations with the U.S. this week, the Biden administration threw cold water on that idea. “We are far away from anything like that right now,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Project 2025 remains nonpartisan, true to 1980s good-gov’t inception despite raucous outcry, key figures say
While the Heritage Foundation’s latest Mandate for Leadership and its overarching Project 2025 have been turned into a right-wing-‘boogeyman’ style Democratic talking point and fodder for Trump critics, its founders and current leaders maintain that its work product past and present speak for itself. President Donald Trump has also criticized the latest iteration and denied any involvement in its formation: “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” Trump said last month. From the Reagan administration through the present, the Heritage Foundation has published its Mandate for Leadership series almost every election cycle. However, project leaders, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, who is now considered the preeminent “elder statesman” of the conservative movement, contend there is nothing radical about the endeavor. In an interview on Wednesday, Meese said the major difference between 1980 and 2024 is that the mechanics of the project have changed. “In the first one, in 1981, it was much more organizational, with information on structure and organizational norms, where – later on in 1989 – it was much more individual policy issues-based,” he said. PROJECT 2025 ISSUES BLISTERING RESPONSE TO HARRIS VIA DOZENS OF INDEPENDENT FACT CHECKS After then-President-elect Reagan named Meese director of his transition team, Meese recalled being invited to a dinner with members of the Heritage Foundation and other conservatives and being offered early proofs of the 1981 Mandate for Leadership itself. Charles Heatherly, who worked on the first project during the 1980 cycle, said on Thursday that the Carter crew had been approached to discuss the initiative – appearing to debunk present-day claims the projects have been one-sided partisan affairs. “Both the Reagan campaign and the Carter campaign were invited to send a representative to that dinner. The Carter campaign never responded,” he said. Meanwhile, Meese said the 1981 project had been “particularly helpful” in the Reagan years, because nothing of the sort had been done in a long time. “Years ago, there had been a coalition, I think, during the Johnson administration. That was quite some time before 1980. And, so it was really time [for this project]. . . .” “It was a really great effort [Heritage] made. They recruited authors who knew the [policy] topics because they had actually worked in those departments or in other [areas], which gave them the opportunity for knowledge about how the rest of the government worked.” “And each department or agency had a chapter in the book. It was about 500 some-odd pages, I remember. And so I was very much impressed with what had happened.” Meese recalled telling Reagan about the new project and said the California Republican had been immediately eager to view the final product. “Reagan was so impressed that he had a meeting of his cabinet before the inauguration. And he put a copy of the book at every person’s desk.” GREEN GOVERNANCE THE NEW GUISE FOR MERCANTILISM, EXPERT SAYS; WILL LEAD TO GLOBAL INSTABILITY The meeting was held in the State Department’s conference center, and each secretary was told to “find your chapter,” Meese said. From that point on, what had started as a meeting of conservative experts began to have a positive effect on the efficiency and policymaking within the new conservative White House. One excerpt reported by UPI recommended against affirmative action, in that the new 1981 administration should “base its civil rights policy on the notion that every person has an inherent right to obtain whatever economic or other rewards he or she has earned, by virtue of merit, and that it is inherently wrong to penalize those who have earned their reward by giving preferential treatment and benefits to those who have not.” As for how the Reagan administration utilized the first project’s work, Heatherly said the then-president’s political appointees were a “mixed bag,” which led to differences in consideration. “Some agencies took it more seriously than others,” he said. Heatherly also pointed to his recent Wall Street Journal column defending the project then and now: He said he had recruited 20 teams of experts from previous White Houses, academic institutions and within then-fledgling Heritage itself. The 1980 cycle’s book project went on to make the Washington Post’s bestseller list for three weeks, he added. Steve Groves served as an assistant special counsel in the Trump administration while the president was being probed by former FBI Director Bob Mueller. He is also the co-editor of this term’s Mandate for Leadership – the policy book portion of Project 2025. Groves pushed back on the idea that Project 2025 or its book were intentionally geared toward Trump. FORMER ATTORNEYS GENERAL URGE ABC TO ASK SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ABOUT SUPREME COURT “It’s just a lot of sloppy journalism,” he said. “Most [journalists] don’t chase the facts to get them right.” Groves said after Biden politically collapsed in the June debate, mentions of Project 2025 in the media “spiked through the roof.” He said it was evidence that the media-liberal-political coalition needed a new narrative, which was to make the Mandate for Leadership into an “insane document.” Groves said that many of the allegations, such as demands for the next president to outlaw abortion and end birthright citizenship, were entirely false. “They just wanted to change the subject,” he said. “[The idea] it’s Trump’s project is a lie,” Groves added, pointing to the fact the anthology came out in 2023 and had been crafted in 2022 when the presidential election was anyone’s game. Groves and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts echoed each other’s sentiments in that regard, as Groves noted that many of the chapters in this year’s work do not present a singular ideological viewpoint. Regarding trade policy in particular, conservatives hold divergent views that both fall under the proverbial “big tent” on the right. As Groves noted, Trump ally Peter Navarro – who would be considered a “fair trade” proponent – and the CEO of the pro-“free-trade” Competitive Enterprise Institute, Kent
Two divers missing after ICG chopper makes emergency landing in sea near Gujarat during rescue operation, search on
Two divers have gone missing after an Indian Coast Guard (ICG) helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea off the Porbandar coast in Gujarat.
In a first, Himachal delays salaries of over 2 lakh govt employees, reason is…
This has created a lot of financial problems and as a result there has been a deferment of salaries for the month of August with employees having no idea when they will be paid their dues
New Texas law takes effect requiring parental approval for children to create social media accounts
A new law has taken effect in Texas that requires parental approval for a child to create a social media account. Parts of the SCOPE Act, or House Bill 18, went into effect on Sunday after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the legislation last year. In a committee hearing last year, Republican state Rep. Shelby Slawson cited threats that unmonitored social media use could pose for children, including cyberbullying and child predators, according to Fox 4. “A Texas teenager was rescued from a shed in North Carolina where she was being held by a predator who allegedly lured her away by a chat app,” she said. TELEGRAM BOSS’ ARREST IN FRANCE IS ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO FREE SPEECH,’ TECH ENTREPRENEUR SAYS However, the law in its current form would not directly flag those types of contacts, Fox 4 reported. Last week, a judge blocked provisions that would have required social media companies to filter out harmful content. But the judge allowed the requirement for parental consent for children creating an account and the authority for parents to supervise their child’s online activities. Some social media companies have argued that there are already protections in place to protect children online. “While we strongly agree with the underlying intent of the bill, we oppose the bill as filed,” Antigone Davis, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, told Fox 4. “We’ve built over 30 tools to help young people be safe and have a positive experience on our platform,” Davis added. “We have parental supervision tools, set time limits, and the ability for parents to see who their child is following.” In the same hearing last year, a Meta representative testified that Facebook and Instagram already have safeguards in place to protect children and that teenagers’ accounts use AI to screen for fake dates of birth being entered to create an account. Meta also said it blocks targeted ads for a variety of topics on its platforms. GERMANY STARTED CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO SOCIAL MEDIA USER FOR MOCKING POLITICIAN FOR BEING ‘FAT’ Brian Dixon, a child psychiatrist with the Texas Medical Association, spoke at the hearing about what he has observed in his young patients regarding the impact of social media on their mental health. “Now kids have access to all things all the time, and there is no filter. They have no perspective to when they are being advertised and when they are not,” he said. Courts have blocked similar legislation passed in other states seeking to regulate social media access for young people.