#Equatorial Guinea enforces yearlong internet outage for island that protested construction company.


Dozens of the signatories and residents were imprisoned for nearly a year, while internet access to the small island has been cut off since then, according to several residents and rights groups.

Local residents interviewed by The Associated Press left the island in the past months, citing fear for their lives and the difficulty of life without internet.

Banking services have shut down, hospital services for emergencies have been brought to a halt and residents say they rack up phone bills they can’t afford because cellphone calls are the only way to communicate.

When governments shut down the internet, they often instruct telecom providers to cut connections to designated locations or access to designated websites, although it’s unclear exactly how the shutdown works in Annobón.

The internet shutdown remains in effect, residents confirmed alongside activists, at a moment when the Trump administration has considered loosening corruption sanctions on the country’s vice president.

The Moroccan company Somagec, which activists allege is linked to the president, confirmed the outage but denied having a hand in it. The AP could not confirm a link.

“The current situation is extremely serious and worrying,” one of the signatories who spent 11 months in prison said, speaking anonymously for fear of being targeted by the government.
Repression ramps up

In addition to the internet shutdown, “phone calls are heavily monitored, and speaking freely can pose a risk,” said Macus Menejolea Taxijad, a resident who recently began living in exile.

It is only the latest of repressive measures that the country has deployed to crush criticisms, including mass surveillance, according to a 2024 Amnesty International report.

Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, is run by Africa’s longest-serving president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who, at 83, has served as president for more than half his life. His son serves as the vice president and is accused of spending state funds on a lavish lifestyle. He was convicted of money laundering and embezzlement in France and sanctioned by the U.K.

On Friday, the UN’s top court declined Equatorial Guinea’s request for France to return a Paris-based mansion confiscated as part of a corruption probe, ruling that the African nation has not shown it has a “plausible right to the return of the building.”

Despite the country’s oil and gas wealth, at least 57 per cent of its nearly two million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank. Officials, their families and their inner circle, meanwhile, live a life of luxury.

The Equatorial Guinea government did not respond to the AP’s inquiry about the island, its condition and internet access.
Annobón has a troubled history

Located in the Atlantic Ocean about 315 miles (507 kilometres) from Equatorial Guinea’s coast, Annobón is one of the country’s poorest islands and one often at conflict with the central government. With a population of around 5,000 people, the island has been seeking independence from the country for years as it accuses the government of disregarding its residents.

The internet shutdown is the latest in a long history of Malabo’s repressive responses to the island’s political and economic demands, activists say, citing regular arrests and the absence of adequate social amenities like schools and hospitals.

“Their marginalization is not only from a political perspective, but from a cultural, societal and economic perspective,” said Mercè Monje Cano, secretary-general of the Unrepresented Peoples and Nations Organization global advocacy group.

A new airport that opened in Annobón in 2013, which was built by Somagec, promised to connect the island to the rest of the country. But not much has improved, locals and activists say. The internet shutdown has instead worsened living conditions there, collapsing key infrastructure, including health care and banking services.
Using internet outage to crack down on a protest

In 2007, Equatorial Guinea entered into a business deal with Somagec, a Moroccan construction company that develops ports and electricity transmission systems across West and Central Africa.

Annobón’s geological formation and volcanic past make the island rich in rocks and expands Malabo’s influence in the Gulf of Guinea, which is abundantly rich in oil. Somagec has also built a port and, according to activists, explored mineral extraction in Annobón since it began operations on the island.

Residents and activists said the company’s dynamite explosions in open quarries and construction activities have been polluting their farmlands and water supply. The company’s work on the island continues.

Residents hoped to pressure authorities to improve the situation with their complaint in July last year. Instead, Obiang then deployed a repressive tactic now common in Africa to cut off access to internet to clamp down on protests and criticisms.

This was different from past cases when Malabo restricted the internet during an election.

“This is the first time the government cut off the internet because a community has a complaint,” said Tutu Alicante, an Annobon-born activist who runs the EG Justice human rights organization.

The power of the internet to enable people to challenge their leaders threatens authorities, according to Felicia Anthonio of Access Now, an internet rights advocacy group. “So, the first thing they do during a protest is to go after the internet,” Anthonio said.

Somagec’s CEO, Roger Sahyoun, denied having a hand in the shutdown and said the company itself has been forced to rely on a private satellite. He defended the dynamite blasting as critical for its construction projects, saying all necessary assessments had been done.

“After having undertaken geotechnical and environmental impact studies, the current site where the quarry was opened was confirmed as the best place to meet all the criteria,” Sahyoun said in an email.

The residents, meanwhile, continue to suffer the internet shutdown, unable to use even the private satellite deployed by the company.

“Annobón is very remote and far from the capital and the (rest of) continent,” said Alicante, the activist from the island. “So you’re leaving people there without access to the rest of the continent ... and incommunicado.”

Ope Adetayo, The Associated Press

#Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told The Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone, he said, while his nine-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family, because soldiers were blocking the entrance to the village and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military said that soldiers were in the village after Palestinians had thrown rocks, injuring two Israeli civilians. It said its forces were still in the village, searching the area and questioning people.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.

He described Saturday’s events as “horrific.”

“Even if you are just filming the settlers, the army comes and chases you, searches your house,” he said. “The whole system is built to attack us, to terrify us, to make us very scared.”

Another co-director, Yuval Abraham, said he was “terrified for Basel.”

“What happened today in his village, we’ve seen this dynamic again and again, where the Israeli settlers brutally attack a Palestinian village and later on the army comes, and attacks the Palestinians.”

“No Other Land,” which won an Oscar this year for best documentary, depicts the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. Ballal and Adra made the joint Palestinian-Israeli production with Israeli directors Abraham and Rachel Szor.

The film has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened the documentary.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to more than 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The three million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

During the war in Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank during wide-scale military operations, and there has also been a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians. There also has been a surge in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Julia Frankel, The Associated Press

#Serbia’s opposing camps hold parallel rallies, reflecting deep political crisis.


Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party recently started organizing its own demonstrations to counter persistent student-led protests that have challenged the president’s firm grip on power in Serbia.

No major incidents were reported at the rallies held in a number of cities and towns with police separating the two camps. Brief scuffles erupted in the capital, Belgrade, when riot police pushed away anti-government protesters as Vucic joined his supporters in a show of confidence.

Vucic said that “people want to live normally, they don’t want to be harassed and want to be free.”

Vucic has refused a student demand to call an early parliamentary election. He has instead stepped up a crackdown on the protests, which have drawn hundreds of thousands of people in the past months. More than 100 university professors have been dismissed, while police have faced accusations of brutality against peaceful demonstrators.

Vucic has accused student-led protesters of being “terrorists” who are working against their country under orders from the West. He hasn’t offered any evidence for such claims.

The protests first started in November last year after a concrete canopy collapse at a renovated train station in the northern city of Novi Sad killed 16 people. It ignited a nationwide movement seeking justice for the victims and blaming corruption-fuelled negligence for the tragedy.

The Associated Press

#Venezuela says US marines raided a fishermen’s boat in the Caribbean as tensions rise.


CARACAS, Venezuela — Personnel from a U.S. warship boarded a Venezuelan tuna boat with nine fishermen while it was sailing in Venezuelan waters, Venezuela’s foreign minister said on Saturday, underlining strained relations with the United States.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tensions between the two nations escalated after U.S. President Donald Trump in August ordered the deployment of warships in the Caribbean, off the coast of the South American country, citing the fight against Latin American drug cartels.

While reading a statement on Saturday, Foreign Minister Yván Gil told journalists the Venezuelan tuna boat was “illegally and hostilely boarded by a United States Navy destroyer” and 18 armed personnel who remained on the vessel for eight hours, preventing communication and the fishermen’s normal activities. They were then released under escort by the Venezuelan navy.

The fishing boat had authorization from the Ministry of Fisheries to carry out its work, Gil said at a press conference, during which he presented a video of the incident.

“Those who give the order to carry out such provocations are seeking an incident that would justify a military escalation in the Caribbean,” Gil said, adding that the objective is to “persist in their failed policy” of regime change in Venezuela.

Gil said the incident was “illegal” and “illegitimate” and warned that Venezuela will defend its sovereignty against any “provocation.”

The Venezuelan foreign minister’s complaint comes days after Trump said that his country had attacked a drug-laden vessel and killed 11 people on board. Trump said the vessel had departed from Venezuela and was carrying members of the Tren de Aragua gang, but his administration has not presented any evidence to support that claim.

Venezuela accused the United States of committing extrajudicial killings. The South American country’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, said Washington’s version is “a tremendous lie” and suggested that, according to Venezuelan government investigations, the incident could be linked to the disappearance of some individuals in a coastal region of the country who had no ties to drug trafficking.

The Trump administration has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of leading a cartel to flood the U.S. with drugs, and doubled the reward for his capture from US$25 million to $50 million.

The U.S. government has given no indication that it plans to carry out a ground incursion with the more than 4,000 troops being deployed in the area.

But the Venezuelan government has nonetheless called on its citizens to enlist in the militias - armed volunteers - in support of its security forces in the event of a potential incursion. On Saturday, it urged them to go to military barracks for training sessions.

The Associated Press

#Russia says #Ukraine peace talks frozen as #NATO bolsters defences,
Russia said Friday that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump meanwhile warned that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week.

The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus.

Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there has been no significant progress towards ending the war launched by Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Russia’s army has gained territory and Putin has vowed to carry on fighting if his peace demands -- including Ukraine ceding yet more land -- are not met.

“Our negotiators have the opportunity to communicate through channels. But for now, it is probably more accurate to talk about a pause” in talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“You can’t wear rose-tinted glasses and expect that the negotiation process will yield immediate results,” he added.

Speaking at a conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said the West should not trust Putin.

“Putin’s goal is to occupy all of Ukraine. And no matter what he tells anyone, it is clear that he has set the war machine in motion to such an extent that he simply cannot stop it unless he is forced to fundamentally change his personal goals,” Zelenskyy said.

Trump’s patience ‘running out’

The Ukrainian leader also called on allies to encourage China to use its leverage with Russia to stop Moscow’s offensive.

Trump has repeatedly threatened Russia with additional sanctions if it does not halt the assault, but has failed to follow through, frustrating Ukraine.

“It’s sort of running out and running out fast, but it does take two to tango,” Trump told Fox television when asked if his patience was being taxed by Russia’s refusal to end the conflict.

“It’s amazing. When Putin wants to do it, Zelenskyy didn’t. When Zelenskyy wanted to do it, Putin didn’t. Now Zelenskyy wants to and Putin is a question mark. We’re going to have to come down very, very strong,” he added.

Ukraine has ruled out making territorial concessions in exchange for a deal, and is calling for a Putin-Zelenskyy summit to break the deadlock.

Putin has effectively ruled that out, and has threatened to target any Western soldiers that might be sent to Ukraine as peacekeepers without his approval.

Russia’s invasion has killed tens of thousands of people in Ukraine, forced millions from their homes and devastated much of the country’s east and south.

Drone tensions

Tensions are high across Europe after Poland said Wednesday that 19 Russian drones had flown through its airspace, three of which were downed after Warsaw and NATO allies scrambled fighter jets.

Poland and about 40 of its allies denounced the intrusion on Friday, calling on Moscow to avoid further “provocations”.

“Russia’s reckless actions represent... a destabilizing escalation,” Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki said before an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council requested by his country.

NATO chief Mark Rutte said the alliance would reinforce its eastern flank following the incident, with Denmark, France, Britain and Germany contributing “assets” in coming days.

Britain announced new sanctions against Russia targeting weapons, equipment suppliers and its “shadow fleet” of sanction-dodging ships.

The European Union meanwhile extended sanctions against more than 2,500 Russian officials and entities for six months.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it was not a “mistake” that the drones flew over his country, rejecting Trump’s suggestion it could have been an accident.

Tusk warned this week that Poland was now closer to “open conflict” than at any point since World War II.

Russia has denied targeting Poland and said the country had failed to present any evidence the drones were Russian.

The military drills between Russia and neighbouring Belarus, which started on Friday, have further ratcheted up tensions.

The drills include exercises close to the border with Poland and Lithuania and in the Baltic and Barents seas.

Russia’s defence ministry posted a video showing heavy military equipment -- including armoured vehicles, helicopters and navy ships -- taking part in the drills.

Russia and Belarus have rejected accusations they pose a danger.

But Poland said it would station around 40,000 troops near the Belarus border for the duration of the drills.

#USA: Report says school shooting suspect was fascinated with mass shootings and expressed neo-Nazi views.


Since December, Desmond Holly, 16, had been active on an online forum where users watch videos of killings and violence, mixed in with content on white supremacism and antisemitism, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism said in a report.

Holly shot himself following Wednesday’s shooting at Evergreen High School in Jefferson County. He died of his injuries. It is still unclear how he selected his victims. The county was also the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 14 people.

Holly’s TikTok accounts contained white supremacist symbols, the ADL said, and the name of his most recent account included a reference to a popular white supremacist slogan. The account was unavailable Friday. TikTok said accounts associated with Holly had been banned.

Holly’s family could not be reached. The Associated Press left a message at a telephone number associated with the house that police searched after the shooting.

A spokesperson for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, Mark Techmeyer, declined to comment on the ADL’s findings or discuss its investigation into the shooting. The office previously said that Holly was radicalized by an unspecified “extremist network” but released no details.

Two recent suspects in school shootings were active on the so-called “gore forum” that Holly used — Watch People Die, according to the ADL. Holly appears to have opened his account in the month in between shootings in Madison, Wisconsin and Nashville, Tennessee, the ADL said.

A few days before Wednesday’s shooting, Holly posted a TikTok video posing in a similar way to how the Wisconsin shooter posed before killing two people in December. He included a photo of the Wisconsin shooter in a post in which Holly wore black T-shirt with “WRATH” written on the front.

He also posted videos showing how he had made the shirt that was like one worn by a gunman in the Columbine shooting, the ADL said.

“There is a through-line between those attacks,” said Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence. ”They’re telling us there is a through line because they are referencing each other."

Emails sent to Watch People Die seeking comment weren’t immediately returned.

Holly was also active on TikTok’s “True Crime Community,” where users have a fascination with mass murderers and serial killers, the ADL said.

Some TikTok posts shared by the ADL show one user encouraging Holly to be a “hero,” a term it says white supremacists use to refer to successfully ideologically motivated attackers.

The person also told Holly to get a patch with a Nazi-era symbol that was worn by the men who carried out the 2019 attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 2022 attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

Holly posted a photo of two patches that he had but said the Velcro on the back had fallen off.

“I’m gonna use stronger glue when I fix it,” he said.

_____

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

Colleen Slevin And Matthew Brown, The Associated Press

UN says rights deteriorated in North Korea in last decade, The human rights situation in North Korea has deteriorated, the UN warned on Friday in a report describing a decade of “suffering, repression, and increased fear”.

The UN first published a scathing report against North Korea in 2014 detailing a wide array of crimes against humanity, likened by the inquiry chairman to those of the Nazis, South African apartheid, and the Khmer Rouge.

Information gathered since then by the UN human rights commissioner’s office shows that the situation has not improved and “in many instances has degraded,” with increased government overreach.

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” concluded the report, which is based on hundreds of interviews.

North Korea, ruled with an iron fist for seven decades by the Kim dynasty, maintains very tight control over its population.

“If the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more suffering, brutal repression and fear,” warned UN rights chief Volker Türk in a statement.

The report points to an increase in the use of the death penalty, major steps backward in freedom of expression and access to information, and the expansion of “mass surveillance” systems through technological advances.

The UN also reports a rise in forced labour. Last year, it indicated that, in some cases, this could amount to slavery –- a crime against humanity.

The 2014 report had already documented forced labour among other widespread human rights abuses in North Korea, including executions, rapes, torture, deliberate starvation, and the detention of between 80,000 and 120,000 people in prison camps.

“The fate of the hundreds of thousands of disappeared persons, including abducted foreign nationals, remains unknown,” the report adds.

Information about prison camps is limited, but UN rights monitoring and satellite imagery suggest there are at least four such camps.

UNITED NATIONS, September 13. The #Kiev regime has never strived for peace and all its actions aim to prolong the conflict, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said.

"As soon as the real chance for peace emerged with the arrival of the White House leader ready to get to the crisis’ root causes and seek a stable solution, Zelensky immediately began to renounce all previously voiced peace initiatives. This merely confirms what we have been saying all along: the Kiev regime has never had any aspiration for peace and everything it is doing only aims to continue the conflict, stay in power and continue to exploit its Western handlers," the diplomat said at a session of the UN Security Council.

The Russian envoy noted that as Vladimir Zelensky’s popularity rating and the level of confidence in him are plummeting, "continued combat" becomes a "tool of political survival" for the Ukrainian authorities. Nebenzya reiterated that Zelensky rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to come to Moscow to discuss the Ukrainian settlement while he continues to visit European capitals demanding "arms supplies and increased military aid.".

NEW YORK, September 12. The suspect in the murder of US conservative activist Charlie Kirk is "with a high degree of certainty" in custody, President Donald Trump told Fox News.

The US leader added that he expects the killer to receive the death penalty.

TASS has compiled the key details known so far.
Alleged killer

- Kirk's killer is believed to be 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, the New York Post reported, citing law enforcement sources.

- Trump said he did not know whether Robinson acted alone or as part of a criminal group.

- The US leader also voiced hope that the activist's killer would receive the death penalty.
Arrest

- The suspect was arrested on Thursday at around 11 p.m. local time (5 a.m. GMT on Friday), Fox News reported, citing a law enforcement source.

- Robinson was turned in to authorities by his own father, the New York Post reported.

- According to CNN, the detainee confessed to his father, who then contacted the authorities.

- The father informed law enforcement officials of his son's confession and kept him under control until the formal arrest, CNN reported.

- Trump, in turn, said the suspect was caught and taken into custody based on a lead from a pastor.

- He also noted that the suspect's father played a role in the arrest of the alleged perpetrator.

#UN assembly votes overwhelmingly to back two-state solution to Israel-Palestinian conflict.

UNITED NATIONS — The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Friday to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urge Israel to commit to a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposes.

The 193-member world body approved a nonbinding resolution endorsing the “New York Declaration,” which sets out a phased plan to end the nearly 80-year conflict. The vote was 142-10 with 12 abstentions.

Hours before the vote, Netanyahu said “there will be no Palestinian state.” He spoke at the signing of an agreement to expand settlements that will divide the West Bank, which the Palestinians insist must be part of their state, saying, “This place belongs to us.”

The resolution was sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, who co-chaired a high-level conference on implementing a two-state solution in late July, where the declaration was approved.

The nearly two-year war in Gaza and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict are expected to be at the top of the agenda of world leaders at their annual gathering at the General Assembly starting on Sept. 22. The Palestinians say they hope at least 10 more countries will recognize the state of Palestine, adding to the more than 145 countries that already do.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, said the support for the resolution reflects “the yearning of almost everyone, the international community, to open the door for the option of peace.”

Without naming Israel, he said, “We invite a party that is still pushing the option of war and destruction, and attempts to eliminate the Palestinian people and steal their land, to listen to the sound of reason — to the sound of the logic of dealing with this issue peacefully, and for the overwhelming message that has resonated in this General Assembly today.”

But Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon dismissed the resolution as “theater,” saying the only beneficiary is Hamas.

“This one-sided declaration will not be remembered as a step toward peace, only as another hollow gesture that weakens this assembly’s credibility,” he said.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally, reiterated its opposition to the New York Declaration and the General Assembly resolution endorsing implementation of the two-state solution.

The resolution “is yet another misguided and ill-timed publicity stunt that undermines serious diplomatic efforts to end the conflict,” U.S. Mission counselor Morgan Ortagas said. “Make no mistake, this resolution is a gift to Hamas.”

The eclaration condemns “the attacks committed by Hamas against civilians” in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a rare condemnation by Arab nations of Hamas. The Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mainly Israeli civilians, and took about 250 hostage. Of those, 48 are still being held, including about 20 who are believed to be alive.

It also condemns Israel’s attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and its “siege and starvation, which have produced a devastating humanitarian catastrophe and protection crisis.” Israel’s offensive against Hamas has killed over 64,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The declaration envisions the Palestinian Authority governing and controlling all Palestinian territory, with a transitional administrative committee immediately established under its umbrella after a ceasefire in Gaza.

“In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority,” the declaration says.

It also supports deployment of “a temporary international stabilization mission” operating under UN auspices to protect Palestinian civilians, support the transfer of security to the Palestinian Authority and provide security guarantees for Palestine and Israel — “including monitoring of the ceasefire and of a future peace agreement.”

The declaration urges countries to recognize the state of Palestine, calling this “an essential and indispensable component of the achievement of the two-state solution.” Without naming Israel but clearly referring to it, the document says “illegal unilateral actions are posing an existential threat to the realization of the independent state of Palestine.”

Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press