Officials said Friday Taliban militants conducted an overnight attack on the western Afghan city of Farah, the capital of Farah province.

There was no immediate word about casualties among Afghan forces or the Taliban.

On Thursday, the NATO-led military alliance said an American soldier and a Romanian soldier were killed “in action”  in Kabul, Afghanistan, raising the number of U.S. military fatalities to 16 this year.

The Resolute Support mission did not immediately disclose additional details, citing policy restrictions.

The announcement came hours after the Taliban took responsibility for a suicide car bombing in the city that the insurgent group claims killed foreign and local military personnel.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi confirmed in a statement the blast killed a least 10 people and injured 42 others. He asserted all the victims were civilians.

The bombing occurred in an area of downtown Kabul that houses NATO’s headquarters, the U.S. embassy and the office of the Afghan spy agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The blast destroyed several vehicles and nearby shops.

Meanwhile, intensifying public outrage at an overnight security operation conducted by NDS forces in eastern Afghanistan that killed four civilians prompted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Thursday to dismiss the NDS chief.

Officials and witnesses said the slain men were brothers, one of them a government employee, who became the target of a Wednesday night security operation against a suspected Islamic State hideout in the city of Jalalabad.

The NDS in a statement took credit for the raid, saying these brothers were IS “facilitators.” In recent months, the spy agency has been increasingly blamed for conducting raids against civilian homes and killing people with impunity in the name of fighting terrorism.

“As a responsible state, we have zero tolerance for civilian casualties. I have regretfully accepted the resignation of NDS chief, Mr. Stanikzai who had had success in other areas of his work,” Ghani said in a statement. “The attorney general has been ordered to investigate the incident immediately to bring the perpetrators to justice,” the president said.

The Taliban said they also were behind Thursday’s car bomb attack near a security meeting of local and foreign personnel in the eastern Logar province. Afghan officials confirmed the killing of four civilians in that attack, saying it also injured 11 others.

The Taliban continues to launch deadly attacks even as its leaders are negotiating a deal with the U.S. on a foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in return for security assurances.

There are roughly 14,000 U.S. troops currently stationed in the country, along with several thousand NATO allies there to train, advise and assist embattled Afghan security forces battling the Taliban.

The insurgent group also took credit for Monday’s suicide bombing on a compound in another part of Kabul housing international organizations and offices of diplomats. That attack killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 100 others.

Afghan media reported at least eight foreigners were among the dead, including a staff member at Romania’s embassy in the country.

Worries about US-Taliban deal

U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad told an Afghan television station on Monday his team of negotiators have drawn up a draft framework agreement that, if approved by President Donald Trump, would allow 5,000 American troops to leave five military bases in the country within 135 days. 

Khalilzad, however, did not discuss whether the prospective deal with the Taliban has outlined the drawdown timeline for the roughly 8,600 residual U.S. forces.

After concluding the ninth round in his yearlong dialogue with the insurgent negotiators in Qatar last Sunday, Khalilzad traveled to Kabul where he shared details of the draft agreement with President Ghani to seek his observations before it is firmed up and signed.

A top Afghan presidential aide, Waheed Omar, told reporters Thursday the government has formally shared its reservations and concerns with U.S. officials about the draft agreement.

Omar would not outline exactly what the concerns were, but he said the government “wishes to reach a permanent and not temporary peace that would, God forbid, result in instability or another war” in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad has said the deal would require the Taliban to engage in intra-Afghan talks to discuss a permanent cease-fire and future power-sharing settlement.

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From: MeNeedIt

Maurice, a French rooster, now has a legal victory to crow about. 
 
A court in Rochefort in western France on Thursday rejected complaints by Maurice’s neighbors that he was a nuisance and made too much noise. 
 
The rooster’s owner, Corrine Fesseau, who lives in the village of Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, was sued by neighbors who claimed Maurice’s crowing had made their holidays stressful. 
 
Fesseau made several attempts to silence the rooster, including placing black sheets around his coop to trick him into thinking that morning had not yet broken.  

Ultimately, the judge found that Maurice, being a rooster, had a right to crow. 
 
“This rooster was not being unbearable,” Julien Papineau, Fesseau’s attorney, said. “He was just being himself.”   

The court also awarded Fesseau $1,100 in damages. 

Maurice’s case made headlines worldwide as an example of urbanites moving to rural areas and trying to change them. 
 
The mayor of Maurice’s hometown called the case the “height of intolerance.” 
 
In May, Bruno Dionis, mayor of the southwestern village of Gajac, wrote an open letter to French lawmakers defending the rights of church bells to ring, cows to moo and donkeys to bray throughout rural France. Such noises are part of “the rhythm of the countryside and things that make it what it is, which are as dear as they are simple,” Dionis wrote, who also asked the government to add the sounds to France’s heritage list. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Villagers near Meiganga, a town in northern Cameroon, are protesting against Chinese gold miners for allegedly ruining their land. The villagers say they are poorer than before the Chinese arrived, with their farms and forests now destroyed.  

Area cattle ranchers and farmers say that if nothing is done to save them from Chinese miners, famine may strike their locality soon. 

Their spokesman, rancher Mamoudu Poro, 54, says the miners destroy farms and do not bother to cover holes and trenches they dig on roads and ranches before leaving. He says they want the Chinese to build the roads they destroyed and fill the trenches they dug, give them electricity and at least a school and a market before leaving. 

Until 2014, Meiganga and surrounding villages cultivated maize, beans and groundnuts and produced cattle for markets in Cameroon, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. 
 
Then, 300 new mining sites producing gold, zinc, nickel and other materials were discovered in the region.  Among the explorers were Chinese companies. 
 
More than a hundred of the companies’ miners work in and around Meiganga. They use tractors and equipment that clean stones and sift soil, allowing them to detect gold faster than locals who use manual tools.  Locals are paid about $2 per day to work at the Chinese mining sites. 
 
Cameroon’s minister of mines, Gabriel Dodo Ndoke, says the complaints of the villagers are legitimate. He says he has asked the companies to respect the terms of their contract with the government.  

Ndoke says the population suffers as a result of environmental degradation and does not benefit as expected because their mineral resources are exploited in a disorganized manner. He says he has given instructions to all exploitation companies to make sure they respect environmental laws and stop destroying farms and cattle ranches, which for now are the only sources of earnings for the people of the area. 
 
Officials with the China Mining Company in Meiganga declined to be interviewed about the allegations.  However, company official Hu Long said the firm has assisted communities by providing aid to hospitals and building or refurbishing schools when solicited.  He says the company also employs about 100 youths.  

This is not the first time Cameroonian villagers have protested against alleged exploitation by the Chinese.  In 2016, residents of eastern Cameroon had conflicts with small-scale Chinese gold miners who had been there for six years. The local miners said the Chinese had taken away their livelihoods and were not living up to promises to develop the area. 
 
Cameroon has not officially announced how much it gains from the mining business but says it contributes a significant amount to the country’s gross domestic product. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Nigeria will experience torrential downpours and massive flooding this month, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency warns.

Nigeria is approaching the peak of its rainy season, and flooding is expected to hit 15 out of its 36 states this month. The agency has issued a red alert because of above-normal water levels on the country’s two largest rivers, the Benue and the Niger.

In August, many communities along the rivers were cut off due to collapsed bridges and impassable roads. Four students were killed when a pedestrian bridge fell at a university in the northern region.

With thousands of houses and hectares of farmland and produce destroyed along with schools and shops, the economic impact of this year’sflooding is expected to be high. The country’s emergency management agency is stepping in to distribute items like cement bags, blankets and hygiene products.

Peter Odjugo, a professor of geography at Nigeria’s University of Benin, works with the Nigerian Meteorological Society. He has been tracking the extreme weather patterns and says the government has repeatedly failed to take preemptive measures to reduce the impact of flooding.

“What they prefer doing or what they are doing now is services after the impact, rather than preventing it from occurring,” he said.

Odjugo suggests that the silt be removed from the rivers to increase the volume of water they can hold. He also recommends that town planners enforce regulation on where buildings are constructed, saying this is a glaring weak spot across the country.

City regulators look out for buildings being constructed near waterways. Such buildings are often marked with an X, designating an order to stop construction work.

Stella Ojeme, the director for information in the Federal Capital Territory Administration, says that even in the nation’s capital ofAbuja, enforcing building codes is a challenge.

“Most of our people will go, buy white paint, paint off the stop work mark,” she said. “First of all, you find people [building] where they shouldn’t build. You find people build on flood plains. You find some people dump their refuse in the gutter.”

Odjugo says climate change is making a real impact in Nigeria, but the government has not made the issue a priority.

Additional challenges

Additionally, the Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency says its weather data collection equipment is being vandalized and stolen.

Clement Eze, the agency’s director general, spoke at a workshop last month, asking the public to help stop the illegal activity, as it is hindering the agency’s ability to forecast extreme weather.

“We can no longer take readings, maybe accumulated or about a week or two,” he said. “Or if there are no resources, it can even take more than six months before we can go back and replenish or repair and this equipment is imported from outside Nigeria.”

During Nigeria’s worst flooding in 2012, the Niger River reached a record high level of 12.84 meters. Two million Nigerians were forced from their homes and 363 people were killed, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.

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From: MeNeedIt

Zimbabwe’s government doctors are on strike, demanding a salary increase to cover the soaring cost of living. The strike began on Tuesday. The doctors, like many government workers, say inflation has made it impossible to meet basic needs.  Columbus Mavhunga has the story for VOA from Harare.

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From: MeNeedIt

The captain and crew who leapt from a burning dive boat off Southern California saved themselves as 34 people perished below deck.  
 
Whether their escape from the Conception before dawn Monday was the only viable option, an act of cowardice or even a crime has yet to be determined. But there are laws providing for punishment of a ship’s master who shirks his duty to safely evacuate passengers. 
 
The responsibilities of master and crew are broadly defined, said professor Martin J. Davies, the maritime law director at Tulane University. With passengers, their duty is take reasonable care in all circumstances. 
 
If the captain made no attempt to save passengers trapped in a burning boat, that would be a violation of his duty. But it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong if crew members decided there was nothing they could do to help the passengers in the berth and abandoned ship to seek help from a boat nearby. 
 
“The notion of the captain always goes down with the ship is consistent with that only because the captain is expected to stay there and do something if that’s going to help,” Davies said. “The idea that the captain is actually supposed to die along with everyone else is not any kind of a legal requirement.” 
 

While authorities have said they view the disaster as an accident, prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office are taking part in the investigation.  
 
Whether anyone is criminally charged will depend on the conclusions of a multiagency investigation on land and sea into the cause of the fire. Investigators interviewed the captain and crew members Wednesday but wouldn’t reveal any of what they learned. 
 
Few details have emerged about what happened before the breathless captain made a mayday call at 3:15 a.m. Monday as he was apparently being overwhelmed by smoke on the boat. Passengers would have been sleeping at the time while the boat was anchored just off Santa Cruz Island.  

Blocked stairway, exit hatch 
 
Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said fire above deck blocked the one stairway and an emergency exit hatch where 33 passengers and one crew member were sleeping in bunks. It’s not known if any alarm sounded or what the people below deck may have done to try to escape. 
 
Finding the cause of the fire could be difficult with the boat largely destroyed and sitting upside down in 60 feet (18 meters) of water. Other items that could provide valuable clues could have been carried away by the tides or destroyed in the fire, which burned so hot that DNA testing was needed to identify the dead. 
 
“All of that will be a very large hurdle to overcome,” said George Zeitler, a former Coast Guard inspector who runs his own marine investigation firm. “It will definitely make for a complex investigation.” 
 
Investigators will want to produce a timeline of the ship’s final voyage from the moment it pulled from a Santa Barbara dock early Saturday morning until the crew jumped overboard, experts said. They will look at the ship’s layout and whether the bunk room below deck was too cramped and had enough exits. They will also review maintenance records and study photos and videos from people who have been on the boat to look for valuable evidence. 
 
While lawsuits are almost a guarantee with such a high death toll, it’s not clear if any crime was committed, experts said. 
 
Under federal law, a captain or crew member can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if misconduct, negligence or inattention to duty leads to a death. The law can also be extended to a boat owner or charterer who engages in “fraud, neglect, connivance, misconduct or violation of law” that takes a life. 

Italian case
 
High-profile cases of boating disasters have sent ship captains to prison for failing to perform their duties.  
 
Capt. Francesco Schettino was sentenced to 16 years in an Italian prison for abandoning ship and other crimes when he fled in a lifeboat after the Costa Concordia ran aground off Tuscany in 2012 and killed 32 people. He refused an order from the Italian Coast Guard to return to the ship. 
 

The Conception, owned by Truth Aquatics, was being chartered for three days by a commercial dive outfit based in Santa Cruz to explore the rugged Channel Islands, sometimes referred to as the Galapagos of North America, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Santa Barbara. 
 
Coast Guard records show fire safety violations on the Conception in 2014 and 2016 were quickly fixed. There were no deficiencies found in February or August 2018 inspections. 
 
The five survivors were all crew members, including the captain. They apparently jumped from the bow, where the stairway led to the sleeping quarters, and swam to the stern, where they escaped in a dinghy and were taken aboard a nearby boat. 
 
Attorney Gordon Carey, who practices maritime law, said the captain and crew should have done what they could to put out the fire, but not to the point of losing their own lives. 

‘Very, very high’ level of responsibility
 
“They may have an obligation to put themselves at risk, but they don’t have an obligation to commit suicide and certain death to save the passengers,” he said. “The captain’s duty is very, very high. I don’t think he has an obligation to kill himself, but he certainly has an obligation to do everything possible … to get that fire out and to get those people out.” 
 
Carey, who is not a criminal lawyer, said it’s possible the owner of the boat or captain could face charges if found criminally negligent for behavior or a design so reckless they should know people’s lives would be at risk in the event of a fire.  
 
Carey has been a scuba diver for 50 years and has been on many long-distance voyages to exotic dive spots around the world. He said he’s never been on a boat where the passengers slept below deck and he questioned why so many were crammed in a space toward the bow with only one staircase and one emergency hatch.  
 
He said an owner or captain must anticipate the normal range of risks — from collision to a breach of the hull to high seas to fire. 
 
Attorney James Mercante, a former merchant marine officer who has defended thousands of maritime casualty cases, said it was unusual that only crew members survived, but that is likely because they were above deck. 
 
Mercante said he would want to find out what the crew did upon being alerted to fight the fire and how long they had done so before they abandoned ship. 
 
“It must have spread awfully quickly if nobody but the crew got out,” Mercante said. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Nearly two years later, the Syrian city of Raqqa, the former de facto capital of Islamic State (IS) terror group, continues to suffer from the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State. Recently, a new mass grave was unearthed that contained more than 200 bodies of IS victims. Sirwan Kajjo reports from Raqqa, Syria.

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From: MeNeedIt

People in the Bahamas are running out of ways to describe the devastation left by Hurricane Dorian.

Words including “apocalyptic,” “shock” and “looking like a bomb went off” have been used, but just about any description seems too weak to describe conditions on Abaco and Grand Bahama Island.

Dorian spent nearly two days parked on top of the northern Bahamas, drenching the islands with massive rainfall and pounding it with winds as high as 251 kilometers per hour (156 miles per hour).

“We are in the midst of one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said.

Entire villages are gone and beaches usually packed with tourists are instead covered with parts of buildings, destroyed cars and the remains of people’s lives.

The death toll late Wednesday stood at 20, but officials said search-and-recovery missions were just starting.

“Right now there are just a lot of unknowns,” Bahamian lawmaker Iram Lewis said, adding, “We need help.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has sent the Coast Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams to help. The British Royal Navy, Red Cross and United Nations are also rushing in food, medicine, and any other kind of aid that may be needed.

The White House said Trump spoke to Minnis on Wednesday, assuring him the U.S. would provide “all appropriate support” and sending American condolences to the Bahamian people for the destruction and loss of life.

U.N. Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock was in Nassau Wednesday, meeting with Minnis. Lowcock said 20% of the Bahamian population had been affected and 70,000 people needed food.

“Nothing of this sort has been experienced by the Bahamas before,” he said, adding that he was immediately releasing $1 million from the U.N. central emergency fund for water, food, shelter and medical services.

The National Hurricane Center said late Wednesday that Dorian had strengthened a little bit and was located about 245 kilometers (152 miles) south of Charleston, South Carolina. Its top sustained winds were at 175 kph (109 mph).

A hurricane warning was out for the Savannah River, along the Georgia-South Carolina border, north to the Virginia-North Carolina border.

Forecasters did not expect Dorian to directly hit the Carolinas, but said hurricane- and tropical storm-force winds extended up to 315 kilometers (196 miles) from the center, putting the coastline at risk of life-threatening storm surges, heavy rain, flash floods and isolated tornadoes.

Forecast maps showed Dorian moving away from land as it drifts up the U.S. Atlantic Coast, reaching the tip of Nova Scotia in Canada by Saturday.

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From: MeNeedIt

The focus in the Bahamas is on rescue and recovery efforts Wednesday after the bulk of Hurricane Dorian finally moved north after flooding neighborhoods, ripping roofs off buildings and leaving thousands of people in need of aid.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said there were seven confirmed deaths from the storm, but that the number was expected to increase. He pledged, “No effort or resources will be held back,” in responding to the disaster.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said flood waters on Grand Bahama and Abaco islands should start to slowly subside.  

Aid efforts have been hampered by the long duration of the storm as it sat over the islands and pummeled the area with strong winds and rain, leaving the runway at Grand Bahama Airport under water.

The Red Cross said Dorian severely damaged or destroyed nearly half the homes on Grand Bahama and Abaco and that 62,000 people were in need of clean water.  The United Nations said some 60,000 people need food after the storm.

Dorian has weakened from its peak power, but still presents a threat to the southeastern United States.

The NHC said early Wednesday the storm still carried maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers per hour and would move “dangerously close” to the coasts of Florida and Georgia during the day and into Wednesday night.  The states of South Carolina and North Carolina are under threat for Thursday and Friday.

Even if the center of Dorian does not make landfall in those states, it is still bringing bands of heavy rains, strong winds that extend out far from the center, and high surf to shorelines. Rainfall forecasts range from seven to 25 centimeters in the coming days.

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From: MeNeedIt

Rescue workers said Tuesday they have recovered the bodies of 20 people killed in a middle-of-the-night fire aboard a dive boat off the coast of Southern California, while continuing to look for 14 more people feared dead.

Divers, in water 20 meters deep, scoured the submerged remains of the 23-meter commercial dive boat, called Conception, where the blaze broke out before dawn Monday, trapping 34 people, who likely were asleep below deck and unable to escape.

The U.S. Coast Guard, however, said it had ended 24 hours of aerial searches of the surrounding waters after finding no sight of survivors swimming to escape the disaster.

Santa Barbara County Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown said that among the 20 bodies recovered so far, there were 11 women and nine men. He said the bodies of another four to six victims were spotted, but divers could not immediately pull them from the wreckage.

The U.S. Coast Guard said five crew members were awake on the boat’s bridge when the fire broke out and jumped to safety in a dinghy.

While authorities have not disclosed the names of the victims, a 41-year-old marine biologist with years of diving experience, Kristy Finstad, was identified by her brother Brett Harmeling as the leader of the dive trip and among the missing.

Authorities have not said what they believe caused the fire.

In a recording of a desperate call to the Coast Guard, a man is heard gasping for air, shouting, “Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

The federal National Transportation Safety Board said it has dispatched a team of engineers and fire specialists to investigate the accident.

The Conception was on a Labor Day weekend cruise taking divers to the Channel Islands off the coast of Southern California. The vessel was chartered by Worldwide Diving Adventures, a Santa Barbara excursion company.

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From: MeNeedIt

Russia’s natural resources and environment minister said on Wednesday he supported allowing private oil and gas companies to work on the Arctic shelf.

Speaking to reporters at an economic forum in the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, the minister, Dmitry Kobylkin, said he supported “any decision linked to an increase in investment in projects related to hydrocarbons.”

The Russian economy is heavily reliant on natural resources and the Arctic’s vast oil and gas reserves are expected to become more accessible as climate change melts the ice and technology advances.

“We clearly understand that Russia’s Arctic zone has not been studied enough,” Kobylkin said in separate comments to TASS news agency. “Of course we would like to study it more, but the government cannot allow itself to make such investments. It’s very expensive.”

In August deputy prime ministers Dmitry Kozak and Yuri Trutnev proposed that Russia’s Arctic shelf be opened to private investors and proposed to draft legislation to expand access to it.

Only state-controlled Gazprom and Rosneft are currently authorized to operate on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Kobylkin told TASS that his ministry was also in talks with Gazprom and Rosneft to increase their Arctic exploration.

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From: MeNeedIt

The eco-minded Prince Harry announced a massive travel sustainability initiative Tuesday in partnership with key service providers that’s aimed at bettering the practices of the global industry amid an ever-increasing number of travelers. 
 
The Duke of Sussex unveiled Travalyst at a news conference in Amsterdam, a city hit hard by over-tourism. He was joined by representatives of his partners, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Visa, China’s largest travel company, Ctrip, and the Ctrip-owned fare aggregator Skyscanner.

The long-term initiative is focused on tackling the travel industry’s impact on climate change, improving wildlife conservation and protecting the environment in top tourist spots. It will also look at ways to better serve local communities through tourism dollars.

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From: MeNeedIt