The Israeli Security Cabinet on Sunday voted to withhold $43 million of tax funds from the Palestinians, saying the money has been used to promote violence, Israeli media reported.
The sum represents funds that Israel says the Palestinians have used to pay the families of Palestinians who have been jailed or killed as a result of attacking Israel, according to various reports.
Israel says the so-called Martyrs’ Fund rewards violence. The Palestinians say the payments are needed to help vulnerable families who have been affected by violence and Israeli occupation.
Under past agreements, Israel collects customs and other taxes on behalf of the Palestinians and transfers the money to the Palestinian Authority. These monthly transfers, about $170 million, are a key source of funding for the budget of the authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel last year passed a law deducting parts of these transfers that it said were supporting militants’ families. Sunday’s decision was a continuation of that policy.
In February, after Israel withheld $140 million, the Palestinians said they would reject all transfers to protest the Israeli policy. But six months later, with the Palestinian Authority in a deep financial crisis, the sides worked out a deal to resume most of the transfers.
Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi denounced the latest Israeli move, calling it a “blatant act of theft and political extortion.”
“This is a clear violation of Palestinian rights and signed agreements as well as a criminal act of collective punishment exacted for cynical domestic Israeli political reasons,” she said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined comment.
The first one occurred 19 days into the new year when a man used an ax to kill four family members, including his infant daughter. Five months later, 12 people were killed in a workplace shooting in Virginia. Twenty-two more died at a Walmart in El Paso in August.
A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University shows that there were more mass killings in 2019 than in any other year dating to at least the 1970s, punctuated by a chilling succession of deadly rampages during the summer.
In all, there were 41 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed, excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings. More than 210 people were killed.
Most of the mass killings barely became national news, failing to resonate among the general public because they didn’t spill into public places like massacres in El Paso and Odessa, Texas; Dayton, Ohio; Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Jersey City, New Jersey.
Most of the killings involved people who knew each other — family disputes, drug or gang violence, or people with beefs who directed their anger at co-workers or relatives.
FILE – Family and friends watch as the casket of Virginia Beach shooting victim Katherine Nixon is wheeled to a hearse after a funeral service at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church in Virginia Beach, Va., June 6, 2019.
In many cases, what set off the perpetrator remains a mystery.
That’s the case with the very first mass killing of 2019, when a 42-year-old man took an ax and stabbed to death his mother, stepfather, girlfriend and 9-month-old daughter in Clackamas County, Oregon. Two others, a roommate and an 8-year-old girl, escaped; the rampage ended when responding police fatally shot the killer.
The perpetrator had had occasional run-ins with police over the years, but what drove him to attack his family remains unknown. He had just gotten a job training mechanics at an auto dealership, and despite occasional arguments with his relatives, most said there was nothing out of the ordinary that raised significant red flags.
The incident in Oregon was one of 18 mass killings in which family members were slain, and one of six that didn’t involve a gun. Among other trends in 2019:
— The 41 mass killings were the most in a single year since the AP/USA Today and Northeastern database began tracking such events back to 2006, but other research going back to the 1970s shows no other year with as many mass slayings. The second-most killings in a year prior to 2019 was 38 in 2006.
— The total of 211 people killed in this year’s cases is still eclipsed by the 224 victims in 2017, when the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place in Las Vegas.
— California, with some of the most strict gun laws in the country, had the most mass slayings, with eight. But nearly half of U.S. states experienced a mass slaying, from big cities like New York to tiny towns like Elkmont, Alabama, with a population of just under 475 people.
— Firearms were the weapons used in all but eight of the mass killings. Other weapons included knives and axes, and at least twice, the perpetrator set a mobile home on fire, killing those inside.
— Nine mass shootings occurred in public places. Other mass killings occurred in homes, workplaces or bars.
James Densley, a criminologist and professor at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, said the AP/USA Today/Northeastern database confirms and mirrors what his own research into exclusively mass shootings has shown.
FILE – Demonstrators gather to protest after a mass shooting that occurred in Dayton, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2019.
“What makes this even more exceptional is that mass killings are going up at a time when general homicides, overall homicides, are going down,” Densley said. “As a percentage of homicides, these mass killings are also accounting for more deaths.”
He believes it’s partially a byproduct of an “angry and frustrated time” that we are living in. Densley also said crime tends to go in waves, with the 1970s and 1980s seeing a number of serial killers, the 1990s marked by school shootings and child abductions, and the early 2000s dominated by concerns over terrorism.
“This seems to be the age of mass shootings,” Densley said.
He and James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University, also expressed worries about the “contagion effect,” the focus on mass killings fueling other mass killings.
“These are still rare events. Clearly the risk is low but the fear is high,” Fox said. “What fuels contagion is fear.”
The mass shootings this year include the three in August in Texas and Dayton that stirred fresh urgency, especially among Democratic presidential candidates, to restrict access to firearms.
While the large death tolls attracted much of the attention, the killings inflicted a mental and physical toll on dozens of others. The database does not have a complete count of victims who were wounded, but among the three mass shootings in August alone, more than 65 people were injured.
Daniel Munoz, 28, of Odessa was caught in the crossfire of the shooting that took place over a 10-mile (16-kilometer) stretch in West Texas. He was on his way to meet a friend at a bar when he saw a gunman and the barrel of a firearm. Instinctively, he got down just as his car was sprayed with bullets.
FILE – Law enforcement officials process the crime scene, Sept. 1, 2019, in Odessa, Texas, from a shooting that ended with the alleged attacker being shot dead by police in a stolen mail van, right.
Munoz, who moved to Texas about a year ago to work in the oil industry, said he had actually been on edge since the Walmart shooting, which took place just 28 days earlier and about 300 miles (480 kilometers) away, worried that a shooting could happen anywhere at any time.
He remembers calling his mother after the El Paso shooting to encourage her to have a firearm at home or with her in case she needed to defend herself. He would say the same to friends, telling them before they went to a Walmart to take a firearm in case they needed to protect themselves or others during an attack.
“You can’t just always assume you’re safe. In that moment, as soon as the El Paso shooting happened, I was on edge,” Munoz said.
Adding to his anxiety is that, as a convicted felon, he’s prohibited from possessing a firearm.
A few weeks later, as he sat behind the wheel of his car, he spotted the driver of an approaching car wielding a firearm.
“My worst nightmare became a reality,” he said. “I’m the middle of a gunfight and I have no way to defend myself.”
In the months since, the self-described social butterfly steers clear of crowds and can only tolerate so much socializing. He still drives the same car, still riddled with bullet holes on the side panels, a bullet hole in the headrest of the passenger seat and the words “evidence” scrawled on the doors. His shoulder remains pocked with bullet fragments.
President Donald Trump retweeted a post that included the alleged name of the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment by the House.
Just before midnight Friday, Trump retweeted a message from Twitter user @Surfermom77, an account that claims to be a woman named Sophia who lives in California. The account shows some indications of automation, including an unusually high amount of activity and profile pictures featuring stock images from the internet.
By Saturday morning, the post seemed to have disappeared on many users’ feeds, suggesting Trump had deleted it, though it could still be found in other ways, including on a website that logs every presidential tweet.
The retweet then reappeared Saturday night. Twitter told The Associated Press that an outage with one of its systems caused tweets on some accounts, including Trump’s, to be visible to some but not others.
Trump has repeatedly backed efforts to unmask the whistleblower. But his Friday night retweet marks the first time he has directly sent the alleged name into the Twitter feed of his 68 million followers.
Unmasking the whistleblower, who works in the intelligence field, could violate federal protection laws that have historically been supported by both parties.
Phone conversation
The whistleblower filed a complaint in August about one of Trump’s telephone conversations with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other dealings with the Eastern European nation. The complaint prompted House Democrats to launch a probe that ended with Trump’s impeachment earlier this month. The matter now heads to the Senate, where the Republican majority is expected to acquit the president.
FILE – President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York.
The central points from the whistleblower’s complaint were confirmed during the House impeachment hearings by a string of diplomats and other career officials, many of whom testified in public. The White House also released a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, in which he asks for help investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
Speculation about the whistleblower’s identity has been circulating in conservative media and on social media for months.
U.S. whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials. The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.
President’s position
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine and has asserted that the whistleblower made up the complaint, despite its corroboration by other officials. Trump also argues that he has a right to face his accuser and has called on the whistleblower to step forward.
For months, an array of right-wing personalities, amateur pro-Trump internet sleuths and some conservative news outlets have published what they claim to be details about the whistleblower, including name and career history. The president himself has also been inching closer to outing the individual; earlier this week, Trump shared a tweet linking to a Washington Examiner article that included the alleged name.
@Surfermom77, the Twitter handle on the post Trump retweeted, describes herself as a “100%Trump Supporter” and California resident. The account had nearly 79,000 followers as of Saturday afternoon. Some of its previous posts have denounced Islam and sharply criticized former President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
FILE – The logo for Twitter is displayed above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Feb. 8, 2018.
@Surfermom77 has displayed some hallmarks of a Twitter bot, an automated account. A recent profile picture on the account, for instance, is a stock photo of a woman in business attire that is available for use online.
That photo was removed Saturday and replaced with an image of Trump.
A deeper look at @Surfermom77’s account shows the user previously used two other stock photos as profile pictures, including one of a model wearing an orange hat used by a hat retailer.
@Surfermom77 has also tweeted far more than typical users, more than 170,000 times since the account was activated in 2013. @Surfermom77 has posted, on average, 72 tweets a day, according to Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation.
“That’s not something most humans are doing,” Hauser said.
While many bots only repost benign information like cat photos, others have been used to spread disinformation or polarizing claims, as Russian bots did in the leadup to the 2016 election.
Many jobs
In past years, @Surfermom77 has described herself as a teacher, historian, documentary author and model. Attempts to reach the person behind the account by telephone on Saturday were unsuccessful. An email address could not be found.
Facebook has a policy banning posts that name the alleged whistleblower. But Twitter, which doesn’t have such a rule, has not removed the tweet from @Supermom77 or tweets from others who have named the alleged whistleblower.
“The tweet you referenced is not a violation of the Twitter rules,” the company wrote in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.
Some details about the whistleblower that have been published online by Trump’s supporters have been inaccurate or misrepresented.
For example, a photo shared widely on social media last month was circulated by Facebook, Reddit and Twitter users who wrongly claimed it showed the whistleblower with Obama’s staffers outside the White House as Trump moved in.
The individual in the photo actually was R. David Edelman, a former special assistant to Obama on economic and tech policy. Edelman debunked the claim on his Twitter account and told the AP he received threats online as a result of the false claims.
‘Completely inappropriate’
Michael German, an FBI whistleblower who left the agency after reporting allegations of mismanagement in counterterrorism cases, said outing government whistleblowers not only puts them at personal risk but also discourages other government officials from stepping forward to expose possible wrongdoing.
German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, said the ease with which the alleged whistleblower’s identity has been spread online shows the need for greater legal protections for whistleblowers.
He added that it’s “completely inappropriate for the president of the United States to be engaged in any type of behavior that could harm a whistleblower.”
North Korea began a closely watched ruling party meeting led by Kim Jong Un, state media reported Sunday, amid signs Pyongyang is set to announce a firmer stance toward the United States.
Kim is widely expected in the next week to announce the details of his “new way” for North Korea, following the expiration of its self-imposed end-of-year deadline for the U.S. to offer a better proposal in stalled nuclear talks.
State media coverage of the Workers’ Party of Korea meeting offered few hints about the country’s direction.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) mentioned an “anti-imperialist” stance and the building up of national defense but gave no other details.
“The plenary meeting goes on,” KCNA said, apparently indicating a multiday meeting.
Talks boycotted
North Korea has boycotted nuclear talks for months and recently threatened to resume long-range missile and nuclear tests. An official said earlier this month that denuclearization was off the negotiating table.
Those threats — mostly made by lower-level officials — were widely seen as an attempt to increase pressure on the U.S. ahead of North Korea’s deadline.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in this undated photo released Dec. 28, 2019, by the Korean Central News Agency.
Kim’s annual New Year’s speech is expected to offer much firmer evidence of the country’s direction in 2020. In his speech last year, he warned of a “new way” if the talks didn’t progress.
North Korea also threatened to deliver a “Christmas gift” to the U.S., leading many analysts to predict a North Korean holiday missile test. But Christmas passed with no signs of what that “gift” might be.
There are multiple possible explanations for why North Korea has refrained from a major provocation, including last-minute progress between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump or a warning from China, which typically frowns on North Korean missile and nuclear tests.
No ‘cold feet’
“But Kim, nevertheless, probably did not get cold feet,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior adviser for Northeast Asia and nuclear policy at the International Crisis Group.
“North Korea’s course of action after the year-end deadline will be far more significant than a gift timed to coincide with what it sees as an American holiday. After all, anything can happen in the remaining six days of 2019 after Christmas. And presents can be delivered any time the giver feels so compelled,” Kim said.
Even without a North Korean launch or other provocation, tensions have been high, especially after Japan’s public broadcaster NHK erroneously reported Friday that North Korea had launched a missile that landed in the waters east of Japan. The broadcaster later apologized for the false report, saying it was a media training alert.
FILE – Soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. participate in a drill at Camp Casey in Dongducheon, north of Seoul, South Korea, March 3, 2011.
A tense moment also occurred late Thursday when Camp Casey, a U.S. Army base in South Korea, accidentally blasted an emergency siren instead of taps, a bugle call typically played at military bases at the end of the day.
The false alarms are even more notable considering the relative silence from North Korea during the last couple of weeks, after having ramped up threats in early December.
‘Deafening’ silence
“It has been the uneasy calm before the storm,” said Robert Carlin, a former U.S. intelligence official with decades of experience researching North Korea.
“The air was certainly heavy with Pyongyang’s warnings earlier. But then, beginning on December 15, these abruptly stopped and the North became extremely quiet, preternaturally quiet,” Carlin said in a post on 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea.
“The silence, in fact, has been deafening,” he said.
The Australian government announced Sunday that it would compensate volunteer firefighters in the state of New South Wales (NSW), as the country’s intense bushfire season rages on.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said payments of up to A$6,000 would be available for eligible firefighters who had spent more than 10 days in the field this fire season.
“I know that our volunteer firefighters in NSW are doing it tough, especially in rural and regional areas,” Morrison said in a statement. “The early and prolonged nature of this fire season has made a call beyond what is typically made on our volunteer firefighters.”
The conservative leader has previously said compensation for volunteers was not a priority, but he has faced increasing political pressure as widespread fires continue to burn.
On Tuesday, he announced government workers could receive additional paid leave for volunteering.
While there are different rules across Australia’s states, volunteers tend to negotiate time off directly with their employers.
Eight fatalities
Bushfires have destroyed more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) in five states since September, and eight deaths have been linked to the blazes.
Cooler conditions in many areas during Christmas week helped contain some blazes, but the fire risk has increased in parts of the country in the final few days of 2019.
On Sunday, organizers of a major music festival in the state of Victoria canceled the event, citing extreme weather conditions expected Monday.
“After consultation with local and regional fire authorities and other emergency stakeholders, it is clear that we have no other option,” the organizers wrote on Facebook.
The event was meant to run until New Year’s Eve, and 9,000 people were already camping at the site when the announcement was made.
A total fire ban is in place for all of Victoria on Monday because of forecast high temperatures and strong winds creating an “extreme” fire risk across most of the state.
The World Health Organization reports investigations into potential health threats and the quick response by WHO and partners to global emergencies has protected millions of the world’s most vulnerable people this year from disease and death.
In 2019, the World Health Organization and partners have responded to 51 emergencies in more than 40 countries and territories and have investigated 440 potential health threats in 138 countries and territories.
After the headlines evoking these emergencies have faded away, the work of helping the victims of manmade and natural disasters recover carries on out of the media spotlight.
Executive Director of WHO Emergencies Program, Michael Ryan, says the unseen work of sustaining fragile health systems in conflicts and other emergencies does not stop.
“In Bangladesh, we work with partners to address the health needs of nearly one million Rohingya refugees living in the crowded camps in Cox’s Bazar,” said Ryan. “The mortality rate in this highly vulnerable population has remained at low levels…These crude death rates remain well below what is considered acceptable in this situation…And, that is down to a lot of hard work by a lot of people.”
Ryan says WHO and partners have provided health services to more than 10 million people in Yemen. He says over one million children have been protected from vaccine-preventable diseases and more than 100,000 have been treated for severe acute malnutrition.
“In Uganda, Ebola transmission was prevented after cases crossed from DRC on two separate occasions,” said Ryan. “And, the preparedness work that has been going on in surrounding countries…Uganda, with the support of the international community spent $18 million on preparedness and stopped Ebola twice.”
The World Health Organization estimates more than one billion dollars will be spent to root out the deadly Ebola virus, which has been circulating in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since August 2018. The latest number of reported cases stands at 3,366, including 2,227 deaths.
Other emergencies to which WHO has responded over the past year include the cyclone in Mozambique, conflict emergencies in Syria and South Sudan, floods in Iran, an earthquake in Albania, and a deadly measles outbreak on the small Pacific island of Samoa.
A NASA robotic rover is nearing completion ahead of a journey next year to search for evidence of past life on Mars and lay the groundwork for the space agency’s mission to send humans into deep space.
The U.S. space agency on Friday showed off its Mars 2020 rover, whose official name will be chosen early next year. NASA will in February ship the rover to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center where its three sections will be fully assembled. A July launch will send the rover to a dry lake bed on Mars that is bigger than the island of Manhattan.
The four-wheeled, car-sized rover will scour the base of Mars’ Jezero Crater, an 820-foot-deep (250-meter-deep) crater thought to have been a lake the size of Lake Tahoe, once the craft lands in February 2021. The crater is believed to have an abundance of pristine sediments some 3.5 billion years old that scientists hope will hold fossils of Martian life.
“The trick, though, is that we’re looking for trace levels of chemicals from billions of years ago on Mars,” Mars 2020 deputy project manager Matt Wallace told Reuters. The rover will collect up to 30 soil samples to be picked up and returned to Earth by a future spacecraft planned by NASA.
“Once we have a sufficient set, we’ll put them down on the ground, and another mission, which we hope to launch in 2026, will come, land on the surface, collect those samples and put them into a rocket, basically,” Wallace said. Humans have never before returned sediment samples from Mars.
The findings of the Mars 2020 research will be crucial to future human missions to the red planet, including the ability to make oxygen on the surface of Mars, Wallace said. The Mars 2020 Rover is carrying equipment that can turn carbon dioxide, which is pervasive on Mars, into oxygen for breathing and as a propellant.
LESSONS FROM CURIOSITY
If successful, Mars 2020 will mark NASA’s fifth Martian rover to carry out a soft landing, having learned crucial lessons from the most recent Curiosity rover that landed on the planet’s surface in 2012 and continues to traverse a Martian plain southeast of the Jezero Crater.
The Soviet Union is the only other country to successfully land a rover on Mars. China and Japan have attempted unsuccessfully to send orbiters around Mars, while India and Europe’s space agency have successfully lofted an orbiter to the planet.
Police fought with protesters who marched through a Hong Kong shopping mall Saturday demanding mainland Chinese traders leave the territory in a fresh weekend of anti-government tension.
The protest in Sheung Shui, near Hong Kong’s boundary with the mainland, was part of efforts to pressure the government by disrupting economic activity.
About 100 protesters marched through the mall shouting, “Liberate Hong Kong!” and “Return to the mainland!”
Police in civilian clothes with clubs tackled and handcuffed some protesters. One officer fired pepper spray at protesters and reporters. Government broadcaster RTHK reported 14 people were detained.
Some shoppers argued with police in olive fatigues and helmets who blocked walkways in the mall.
Protests that began in June over a proposed extradition law have spread to include demands for more democracy and other grievances.
The proposed law was withdrawn but protesters want the resignation of the territory’s leader, Carrie Lam, and other changes.
Protesters complain Beijing and Lam’s government are eroding the autonomy and Western-style civil liberties promised to Hong Kong when the former British colony returned to China in 1997.
On Saturday, some merchants in the Sheung Shui mall wrapped orange tape around kiosks or partially closed security doors in shops but most business went ahead normally.
Hong Kong, which has no sales tax and a reputation for genuine products, is popular with Chinese traders who buy merchandise to resell on the mainland.
Sheung Shui was the site of clashes between police and demonstrators in June.
Earlier this week, protesters smashed windows in shopping areas over the Christmas holiday. Some fought with police.
A total of 336 people, some as young as 12, were arrested from Monday to Thursday, according to police. That brought the total number of people arrested over six months of protests to nearly 7,000.
Protesters have damaged subway stations, banks and other public facilities.
Earlier this month, opposition candidates won a majority of posts in elections for district representatives, the lowest level of government.
Thousands of koalas are feared to have died in a wildfire-ravaged area north of Sydney, further diminishing Australia’s iconic marsupial, while the fire danger accelerated Saturday in the country’s east as temperatures soared.
The midnorth coast of New South Wales was home to up to 28,000 koalas, but wildfires in the area in recent months have significantly reduced their population. Koalas are native to Australia and are one of the country’s most beloved animals, but they’ve been under threat thanks to a loss of habitat.
“Up to 30% of their habitat has been destroyed,” Environment Minister Sussan Ley told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “We’ll know more when the fires are calmed down and a proper assessment can be made.”
Images shared of koalas drinking water after being rescued from the wildfires have gone viral on social media in recent days.
“I get mail from all around the world from people absolutely moved and amazed by our wildlife volunteer response and also by the habits of these curious creatures,” Ley said.
About 5 million hectares of land have burned nationwide during the wildfire crisis, with nine people killed and more than 1,000 homes destroyed.
Smoke rises from wildfires, Dec. 27, 2019, in the Blue Mountains, New South Whales, Australia. Firefighters battling wildfires in Australia’s most populous state face increased fire danger thanks to higher temperatures.
Fire danger in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory was upgraded to severe Saturday, as high temperatures built up over the region. Sydney’s western suburbs reached 41 degrees Celsius (105 F) Saturday, while the inner city is expected to hit 31 C (87 F) Sunday before reaching 35 C (95 F) Tuesday.
Two wildfires in New South Wales are at the “watch and act” level issued by fire services.
Canberra, Australia’s capital, peaked at 38 C (100 F) Saturday, with oppressive temperatures forecast for the next seven days.
Meanwhile, New South Wales Emergency Services Minister David Elliott has gone on an overseas family vacation in the wake of Prime Minister’s Scott Morrison’s much-criticized family trip to Hawaii recently.
Morrison, who apologized for going away, eventually cut short his vacation and returned to Sydney last weekend.
Elliott said he will be briefed daily while overseas.
“If the bushfire situation should demand it, I will return home without hesitation,” he said.
Environment and wildlife advocates in Afghanistan’s central province of Bamyan are concerned about an increase in the hunting of exotic birds, in particular hawks. Bird traffickers sell them for little profit to traffickers in neighboring countries. VOA’s Zafar Bamyani talked to hunters and local officials and filed this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
Debate on the future of the CFA franc in the six-member Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) has intensified after it was announced last week that eight West African countries agreed to change the name of their common currency to Eco. They also severed the CFA franc’s links to former colonial ruler France.
The CFA franc used by west and central African states is considered by many as a sign of French interference in its former African colonies, and the main reason for the underdevelopment of CEMAC, which remains the poorest economic bloc in Africa.
Louis Nsonkeng, a researcher and economic lecturer at the University of Bamenda-Cameroon, says when the Eco becomes legal tender, the eight West African states will have their financial freedom from the strong grip of former colonial master France. He says the six central African states that also use the CFA franc should immediately emulate the example of the west Africans.
“In 2017, the International Monetary Fund published the [list of] 10 richest countries in Africa,” Nsonkeng said. “None of the countries was from the CFA zone and most of these countries have their own currencies. If we discover that we don’t have the resources to manage a common currency, then we should dissolve the currency area. We should dissolve it and each country should decide on their own currency.”
Thomas Babissakana, a Cameroon economist and financial expert, is pictured in Yaounde, Dec. 26, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Congo use the CFA franc. The CEMAC member states have more than 50 percent of their financial reserves kept in the French treasury, following agreements signed in 1948.
Thomas Babissakana, a Cameroon economist and financial expert, says such agreements drain the economies of central African states because France now uses the euro, yet France still controls its currency.
It is unthinkable, he says, that a country will claim it has its independence when its currency, which is an essential instrument for its economic policies, is controlled by a former colonial master.
Daniel Ona Ondo, president of the CEMAC commission, talks with the media in Douala, Dec. 26, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
The CFA franc, created in 1945, is considered by many as a sign of French interference in its former African colonies, even after the countries became independent.
The CFA franc was pegged to the French franc until 1999, when its value was fixed at about 660 CFA francs to one euro.
Daniel Ona Ondo, president of the CEMAC commission, says the six member states’ economic growth rate is estimated at 3 percent in 2019 — up from barely 1 percent in 2018 — and inflation remains under control at less than 3 percent. He says the most demanding issue is to consolidate regional integration before thinking of currency reforms.
Fourteen west and central African countries divided into two monetary unions, ECOWAS and CEMAC, use the CFA franc.
An airliner with 98 people on board crashed in Kazakhstan shortly after takeoff early Friday, killing at least 12 and injuring 54 others, authorities said.
Kazakhstan’s Civil Aviation Committee said in a statement the Bek Air plane hit a concrete fence and a two-story building after takeoff from Almaty International Airport.
Local authorities had earlier put the death toll at 15, but the Interior Ministry of the Central Asian nation later revised the figure downward, without giving an explanation.
Flight 2100, a Fokker-100 aircraft, was heading to the capital, Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana, when it lost attitude at 7:22 a.m. local time.
Authorities say all Bek Air flights in Kazakhstan were immediately suspended pending the investigation of the crash.
The manufacturer of the Fokker-100, a medium-sized, twin-turbofan jet airliner, went bankrupt in 1996 and production of the plane stopped the following year.
The cause of the crash was unclear, but the central Asian country’s deputy prime minister, Roman Sklyar, said authorities were looking into pilot error or technical failure.
Upwards of 1,000 first responders were working at the crash site, which was covered in snow. Dozens of people showed up at a local blood bank to donate.
The government said it would pay families of the victims about $10,000 apiece.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered an inspection of all airlines in the country, along with the aviation infrastructure. Eighteen passenger airlines and four cargo carriers are registered in Kazakhstan.
