Mes: septiembre 2019

(AP) KINSHASA, Congo – Rebels have seized a town on volatile eastern Congo after the army fled their advance, a local official said Sunday. Omar Kavota says the M23 rebels seized the town of Rutshuru Sunday. Kavota says the army looted during their retreat. “We appeal to the international community to do something to protect the civilians who fled the fighting and are living in fear,” he said. Panicked residents were fleeing Rutshuru on Friday night amid reports that the rebels had advanced within shelling distance, according to a statement from the North Kivu Civil Society. Fears were heightened by the evacuation of U.N. and independent aid agencies, followed in the late afternoon by the retreat of Congolese army soldiers, it said. An Indian peacekeeper was killed overnight on Thursday as M23 fighters attempted to take the town of Bunagana, said Madnodje Mounoubai, the United Nations spokesman in Congo. Congo’s two-year-long peace was shattered in April when an army unit led by Gen. Bosco Ntaganda defected. They fled into the bush, where they regrouped as the M23 rebels, named for the date in March 2009 when the former rebels signed a deal with the Congolese government, a deal brokered as the army was in full retreat and the dissidents threatened to take the eastern provincial capital of Goma. Under the accord, the rebels were integrated into the very army...

MOSCOW — The Telegram encrypted messenger app said Tuesday said it would cooperate with investigators in terror probes when ordered by courts, except in Russia where it is locked in an ongoing battle with authorities. The company founded by Russian Pavel Durov has refused to provide authorities in the country with a way to read its communications and was banned by a Moscow court in April as a result. But in its updated privacy settings, Telegram said it would disclose its users’ data to “the relevant authorities” elsewhere if it receives a court order to do so, although not in Russia. “If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you’re a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities,” Telegram’s new privacy settings said. “So far, this has never happened. When it does, we will include it in a semiannual transparency report,” the app added. Durov said the new privacy terms were adopted to “comply with new European laws on protecting private data.” But Durov assured his Russian users that Telegram would continue to withhold their data from security services. “In Russia, Telegram is asked to disclose not the phone numbers or IP addresses of terrorists based on a court decision, but access to the messages of all users,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. He added that since Telegram is illegal...

(AP) TRIPOLI, Libya – Libya’s first nationwide elections in nearly five decades brought hints Sunday of an Arab Spring precedent: Western-leaning parties making strides over Islamist rivals hoping to follow the same paths to power as in neighbors Egypt and Tunisia. While final results from Saturday’s parliamentary election could still be days away under a two-tier selection system, unofficial and partial counts from Libya’s biggest cities suggested liberal factions were leading the Muslim Brotherhood and allies in a possible first major setback to their political surge following last year’s uprisings. If the Libyan trend holds — which is still far from certain — it would challenge the narrative of rising Islamist power since the fall of Western-allied regimes from Tunis to Cairo. It also could display the different political dynamics in Libya, where tribal loyalties run deep and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood at times cooperated with the rule of Muammar Qaddafi. “Anyone with past ties with old regime is hated, even despised,” said Fathi al-Fadhali, a pro-Islamist Libyan political analyst who lived in exile for 30 years. “Any political names associated with the regime are immediately politically burnt by that association.” Ultimately, the 200-seat parliament will face the task of forming a government — which could become tests of strength for Islamists and secular forces over questions such as women’s rights, the extent of traditional Islamic law...