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Burundi closes border with Rwanda in latest East Africa row

Burundi closes border with Rwanda in latest East Africa row

President Ndayishimiye accuses Rwanda of backing DRC-based armed group Red Tabara against his government. The Rwandan government says Burundi had decided to shut its border with the East African nation, weeks after its president accused Kigali of hosting a rebel group. In late December, Burundi’s president, Evariste Ndayishimiye, accused Rwanda of hosting and training the Red Tabara rebel group, which claimed responsibility for an attack near Burundi’s western border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwanda has rejected his allegations. A Rwanda spokesperson said on Thursday that the government learned about Burundi’s border closure through media reports, adding that it violated the principles of a regional bloc both are members of. “This unfortunate decision will restrict the free movement of people and goods between the two countries and violates the principles of regional cooperation and integration of the East African Community,” Yolande Makolo said. “Today we closed the borders, and someone who will go there will not pass,” Burundian Interior Minister Martin Niteretse was quoted as saying on Thursday by local media. Burundi has said the December attack killed 20 people while Red Tabara said on the social media platform X that it killed nine soldiers and a police officer. Red Tabara has been battling Burundi’s government from bases in the eastern DRC since 2015. [embedded content] Regional rifts Relations between some nations within the East African Community (EAC) – which also includes Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, the DRC, and Somalia – have been frosty for years. Uganda and Rwanda reopened their border posts after a three-year closure caused by Kigali’s claim that Kampala was supporting dissents to overthrow the Rwandan government. The DRC has repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing the armed group M23, which has triggered the displacement of millions of Congolese. From 2022 to 2023, the EAC deployed soldiers to battle the group and scores of others that operate in Africa’s second largest country by landmass, but Rwandese soldiers were excluded. United Nations experts and the European Union have also cited evidence of Kigali’s support for M23, but Kigali denies the allegations. Angolan efforts to mediate between the DRC and Rwanda have failed. In December, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi further intensified the situation during a campaign stop. “I’ve had enough of invasions and M23 rebels backed by Kigali,” Tshisekedi said. “If you re-elect me and Rwanda persists, … I will request parliament and Congress to authorise a declaration of war. We will march on Kigali. Tell Kagame those days of playing games with Congolese leaders are over.” Adblock test (Why?)

I’m preparing for China’s war on Taiwan | Close Up

I’m preparing for China’s war on Taiwan | Close Up

This Taiwanese citizen is taking up arms in preparation for what he believes is an imminent Chinese invasion. “I think China will invade Taiwan between 2025 and 2027,” says Wu Jheng Cong, a Taiwanese sofa-maker living in Taoyuan City. “These rations of food can last our entire family 20 days to a month.” He has stocked up on food, taken up weapons training and has weekly gatherings with his civil defence group, where they develop their survival skills. Local media in Taiwan reports that around half a million people have voluntarily enlisted in civil defence training. Wu is one of them. “When the war comes, things are going to get tough,” he tells us. His fear is that the Taiwanese military and reserve forces may not be large enough to withstand a military invasion by China, prompting him and his peers to organise and train for war. “You have to start years before it actually comes,” Wu says. While many Taiwanese believe China’s rhetoric around ‘reunification’ remains a distant threat, tensions between Beijing and Taipei have escalated dramatically in recent years. Wu believes that fostering a close connection with his training companions will be what protects him, his wife and his three-year-old son in case of emergency. “Being in a group like this, I’m reminded of my purpose. When the war comes, there’s someone to fight for.” Credits Filmed by: Joseph Mangat and Wang Chun Hong Produced by: Tierney Bonini and Antonia Perello Field Producer: Allen Chen Edited by: Joseph Mangat and Antonia Perello Sound recording: Ken Wu Sound Mixing: Linus Bergman Colourist: Catherine Hallinan Senior Editor: Donald Cameron Adblock test (Why?)

Putin waged a trade war long before bombing Ukraine. Which side is winning?

Putin waged a trade war long before bombing Ukraine. Which side is winning?

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was shutting down the Black Sea to Ukrainian agricultural exports. The reason, ostensibly, was Ukraine’s second attempt to cripple the Kerch Bridge, Russia’s main artery to the Crimean Peninsula and key to its ammunition logistics. A massive explosion caught on camera in the small hours of July 17 left a section of road deck hanging askew over the Black Sea. In December, the head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), Vasyl Malyuk, confirmed the SBU had developed the Sea Baby drones used in the operation. In retaliation, Russia said it was withdrawing from an agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain out of the Black Sea, brokered a year earlier by the United Nations and Turkey to prevent hunger among the world’s poorest. Marking its withdrawal, Moscow launched an overnight missile attack on Ukraine’s Odesa and Chernomorsk, two of the three ports authorised to export grain under the initiative, destroying grain silos, fuel oil and loading equipment. Two days later, Putin revealed the real reason for his change in strategy. In a staged conversation with his agriculture minister, Dmitry Patrushev, Putin said Russian farmers had lost $1.2bn and Russian fertiliser manufacturers $1.6bn, roughly half their profit margins, due to high costs for shipping, spare parts and financial transactions. Ukraine, too, has suffered from higher shipping costs stemming from Putin’s war and the conflict in Gaza, which has forced commercial shipping to detour around Africa. But Putin and Patrushev blamed the increase solely on Western sanctions. According to Putin, Russia showed “miracles of endurance and patience” hoping that its foreign colleagues would finally begin to “fully comply with the agreed and approved parameters and conditions”. Instead, Russia reaped “arrogance and impudence, promises and empty chatter”, he said. Although the West never sanctioned Russian grain or fertiliser, Putin’s argument was that sanctions on Russian banks and machinery imports effectively sanctioned agricultural industries. He also believed 200,000 tonnes of Russian fertiliser were being unofficially blocked in European ports. Russia sought to leverage Black Sea security to overturn Kyiv’s sanctions, as well. “He wants the fertiliser pipeline through Odesa to be reopened,” Kyiv School of Economics Director Tymofiy Mylovanov told Al Jazeera, referring to a pipeline built in 1981, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, to carry ammonia from the TogliattiAzot plant 500km (311 miles) east of Moscow to Odesa for export. A blast disabled the defunct pipeline last June. Russia accused Ukraine of sabotage. “There is no way Ukraine will reopen any kind of transit through Ukraine of any kind of Russian products,” Mylovanov said. “Russia is in a full-scale war with us and they want to trade through us. This is just not possible.” Russia’s very reason for agreeing to the grain initiative was to slow down Ukrainian exports, believed Mylovanov. Under the initiative Russia was entitled to inspect grain ships, but average daily inspections had fallen from 11 to five by early last year, said the UN, causing Ukrainian exports to fall from 4.3 million tonnes in October to 1.3 million tonnes in May. This was merely the latest tactic in a trade war that long predated Russia’s ground war, said Mylovanov. “Putin started placing … barriers to trade on Ukrainian agricultural products from grain to dairy as early as 2012,” he said. Russia “would impose certain tariffs and they would abandon them arbitrarily”. Farmer Vitalii Kistrytsya, 45, walks next to grain at his grain storage facility, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the Dnipropetrovsk region [File: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters] In doing this, Putin was weaponising uncertainty “to paralyse decision-making in agricultural companies and to deny investment in the capacity,” Mylovanov said. The construction of the Kerch Bridge may have been part of this trade war. The bridge “basically denied high-volume tankers [access] so Azov Sea ports became unavailable to Ukraine in 2016-2019. We had to rebuild our railroad routes to pass through Odesa, so farmers in the east were hurt by this”, he said. None of Putin’s tactics seemed to work. Ukraine’s goods, mainly agricultural, were becoming ever-more competitive with Russia’s. Exports rose from $33.5bn in 2016 to $63.1bn in 2021, World Bank data showed. Only the full-scale invasion changed that. Putin’s war cost the Ukrainian economy 29 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 14 percent of its population. Its goods exports plummeted to $40.1bn. But Ukraine’s agriculture is now bouncing back, with a record harvest of 80 million tonnes – 58 million tonnes of it was grain. Russia harvested more than twice as much grain – 123 million tonnes – but its landmass is 28 times greater than Ukraine’s and its population five times greater. Ukraine is punching way above Russia’s weight. That is important because rising agricultural exports may now represent Ukraine’s best hope of prosecuting the war. Kyiv faces a gaping budget deficit of $43bn this year, which financial aid will only partly address and faces political hurdles in Brussels and Washington. Kyiv needs to maximise export revenues, and Russia is trying to starve it. “Ukraine, as today’s events show, cannot rely only on international grants and loans. You have to earn money yourself,” Odesa newspaper editor Oleg Suslov told Al Jazeera. “Russia understands this, too. Its desire to destroy the port infrastructure is aimed at reducing the flow of export earnings to Ukraine in the hope that this will destabilise the domestic economic situation and sow panic among the population,” he said. The longer-term strategy is geopolitical, said Mylovanov. “They want to get Ukraine off the market so … they can get monopoly positions and they can later weaponise or politicise them. For the Middle East, a lot of concerns are food security … If your major trading partner is just Russia, then they have some leverage.” Russia tries to enforce its embargo In addition to attacking Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, Russia sent drones and missiles to destroy cranes and silos at Ukraine’s Danubian ports of Reni, Izmail and Vylkove, and damaged trucks at the

Winner of Mood Indigo 2023 (IIT Bombay)

Winner of Mood Indigo 2023 (IIT Bombay)

Their original set resonated with the pulsating beats and dynamic melodies, casting an enchanting spell upon the vast audience, who swayed and grooved in unison, wholly immersed in the band’s sonic journey.

Abbott says ‘we’re not shooting people’ who cross the border because feds ‘would charge us with murder’

Abbott says ‘we’re not shooting people’ who cross the border because feds ‘would charge us with murder’

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said shooting people who cross the border illegally is the only policy his state has not implemented to secure the border because the Biden administration “would charge us with murder.”  “We are using every tool that can be used from building a border wall, to building these border barriers, to passing this law that I signed that led to another lawsuit by the Biden administration where I signed a law making it illegal for somebody to enter Texas from another country,” Abbott told conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch last week. The governor said Texas is “deploying every tool and strategy that we can” to deal with the immigration crisis.  “The only thing that we’re not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because of course the Biden administration would charge us with murder,” Abbott said. His comments were first highlighted by Heartland Signal.  BIDEN DOJ SEEKS SUPREME COURT INTERVENTION OVER TEXAS RAZOR WIRE AT SOUTHERN BORDER Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa slammed the governor’s “bloodthirsty” remarks in a lengthy statement issued Tuesday.  “The only thing stopping Greg Abbott from ordering law enforcement to shoot migrant women and children are murder charges. Time and time again, Greg Abbott and Texas Republicans have made it abundantly clear they have no morality or humanity,” Hinojosa said.  “Their only solutions to ‘secure’ the border are separating families, medieval death traps, and mass imprisonment of migrants and Texans who are perceived to be undocumented by law enforcement. This is the same rhetoric endorsed by domestic terrorists such as the El Paso shooter, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump — who recently echoed Adolf Hitler by accusing immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’” he continued. The Democratic Party official went on to criticize a recently signed anti-illegal immigration law that allows state and local law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants, which the Biden administration says interferes with the federal government’s authority, frustrates U.S. immigration operations and proceedings and hurts relations with foreign governments. TEXAS SEIZES CONTROL OF PARK, BLOCKS BORDER PATROL FROM ENTERING, AS PART OF ANTI-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION EFFORTS “This bloodthirsty approach to governance is dangerous not only for migrants and Texans of color – but for our entire state. SB 4 is being challenged in federal court for its extreme overreach of authority against Black and Brown Texans — because brutality is their blueprint, cruelty is their point, and extremism is their M.O.,” Hinojosa said.  “It is our duty to protect our country’s most vulnerable, and Texas Republicans’ dehumanization of these communities will continue until their authoritarian policies prevail – or apparently, until they catch a murder charge.” An Abbott spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  BIDEN LAWSUIT OVER TEXAS IMMIGRATION LAW LATEST ATTEMPT TO STIFLE STATE’S MOVES TO STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION Abbott’s administration has clashed with the Biden administration numerous times over illegal immigration and border security. Abbott has accused President Biden of failing to enforce immigration law and the federal government has responded by accusing Texas of interfering with federal law enforcement.  Texas installed barbed wire near key crossing areas where there have been massive surges of illegal immigration in recent years. The Biden administration on Tuesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. The federal government has said that once migrants are on U.S. soil, Border Patrol agents must apprehend them, and has claimed the wire “inhibits Border Patrol’s ability to patrol the border.” Abbott lambasted the Biden administration’s lawsuit and defended the decision to install razor wire along the border.  “In the history of America, have you ever seen a president tried to prevent a state from securing his own safety? We laid down this razor wire, hundreds of miles of it that was an effective deterrent and repelled migrants from entering the state of Texas,” Abbott told Loesch. “And because it was so effective, Biden ordered the Border Patrol to either cut it or to lift it,” he said. Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Fox News’ Bill Melugin contributed to this report.