Prosperity, by Fiat
NEED TO KNOW
Prosperity, by Fiat
RWANDA
A notable international exchange occurred recently when Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour prime minister of the United Kingdom, announced that he would scrap his Conservative predecessor’s plan to fly migrants to the southern African country of Rwanda.
Starmer said the plan was a “gimmick” and “dead and buried”, and it was now time to “turn our back on tribal politics,” reported Yahoo! News.
The UK has already paid around $280 million to Rwanda, a formerly impoverished nation still grappling with the legacy of the 1994 genocide where the Hutu ethnic majority massacred 800,000 people, mainly from the Tutsi minority community. Starmer hoped to recoup that money. Rwandan President Paul Kagame likely has other ideas, however.
The British approached Rwanda “to address the crisis of irregular migration affecting the UK – a problem of the UK, not Rwanda,” said Kagame’s government in a statement. Rwanda “has fully upheld its side of the agreement, including with regard to finances.”
The response reflected Kagame’s confidence in his hold on power and his international standing – but also showcased his questionable methods to stay in office.
Kagame is expected to win a fourth term when Rwandan voters hold presidential elections on July 15. He has served since 2000 and in that time, he has centralized power in the country and suppressed dissent while also pushing through economic reforms that have expanded the country’s economy, explained the Liechtenstein-based analysis group, Geopolitical Intelligence Services.
The president is credited with expanding life expectancy, promoting a boom in the tourism industry – underscored by luxury hotels proliferating in the capital of Kigali – kickstarting an entrepreneurial landscape featuring tech startups, building a new stadium that hosts basketball games, and other developments. All have helped turn Rwanda into an example of development and innovative success on the African continent, National Public Radio wrote, even as Kagame’s support of rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere has destabilized the region.
Kagame has also baldly stifled his opponents’ chances, wrote World Politics Review. Electoral authorities only approved Kagame and two other candidates, the Democratic Green Party’s Frank Habineza and the independent Philippe Mpayimana, according to the BBC. A critic of the president, Diane Rwigara, was blocked from running.
A Rwandan court had previously sentenced another vocal critic, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, to eight years in prison. In a first-person piece in Al Jazeera, Umuhoza described how she spent five years of solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison after her trumped-up conviction on charges of denying the genocide. Kagame pardoned her a year after the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruled that her rights had been violated.
Umuhoza wasn’t optimistic about the upcoming election. Her name won’t appear on the ballot, either, despite her attempt to run. “It already promises to entrench the persistent suppression of opposition voices by the current government in Rwanda,” she wrote in Foreign Policy. “As a victim of this suppression, I find myself once again barred from participating in an electoral process that I, as a Rwandan, have a right to take part in.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Tentative Talks
ISRAEL/ GAZA STRIP
Hamas officials released a series of conflicting statements Sunday about withdrawing from ceasefire talks with Israel, a day after Israeli strikes hit a camp in the Gaza Strip targeting high-ranking Hamas commanders and the alleged masterminds of the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, the Times of Israel reported.
Early on Sunday, an unnamed senior Hamas official told Agence France-Presse that it would be pulling out of the negotiations mediated by Qatar and Egypt, and that were supported by the United States. The official cited Israeli “massacres” in the Palestinian enclave and Israeli “inflexibility” in negotiations.
But later, Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’s political office, said the group has not exited the ceasefire discussions, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging the process.
The conflicting statements came after Israel launched airstrikes on a camp for displaced people in southern Gaza Saturday, targeting senior Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported that the strike resulted in 92 deaths and more than 300 injured.
Israeli army officials maintained that the attack focused on a Hamas compound rather than a civilian area, aiming to eliminate Deif and his deputy, Rafa’a Salameh.
Netanyahu has not confirmed Deif’s death, while Hamas officials insisted that the commander survived and continues to lead military operations.
Deif, at the top of Israel’s most wanted list, is responsible for orchestrating numerous attacks against civilians and soldiers. Israel has accused him of being one of the architects behind the Oct. 7 assault on Israel that triggered the conflict.
That attack on Israel killed at least 1,200 people and saw more than 240 others taken hostage by Hamas and its allies. Israel’s subsequent military response has killed more than 38,000 people and devastated the Palestinian enclave, causing a humanitarian crisis and prompting international condemnation.
Meanwhile, negotiations for a truce in Gaza have been tumultuous: These talks are centered on a framework proposed by US President Joe Biden, which includes a six-week ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
While progress has been hindered by recent Israeli strikes and internal disagreements, diplomats said further negotiations are planned in Doha, Qatar, involving high-level participants such as Israeli Mossad chief David Barnea.
Tightening the Fist
RUSSIA
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill into law over the weekend that would ban lawmakers from leaving the country without prior approval, the latest effort by the government to tighten control and quash dissent at home amid criticism over its ongoing invasion in Ukraine, Radio Free Europe reported.
Under the new law, lawmakers from both the lower and upper houses of parliament need to have their overseas trips pre-approved, although it does not mention who should make such approvals.
While business trips will be exempted from the ban, parliamentarians who violate the new rules could lose their seats.
Observers called the legislation another effort by Putin to curb dissent among Russia’s elites over the war in Ukraine that began more than two years ago. The Russian leader has outlawed criticism of the war and the army and cracked down on the media, most recently calling the English-language Moscow Times “undesirable,” and saying it is violating Russian laws.
Even so, authorities claimed that travel restrictions are aimed at combatting new threats to Russia’s security, including providing guarantees to lawmakers to prevent them from being arrested and prosecuted by “unfriendly governments,” according to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.
The ban comes a day after Putin signed a new law to amend Russia’s taxation rules in an effort to fill government coffers, the Associated Press wrote.
The new bill will establish a progressive tax on personal income: Individuals with incomes of up to $27,500 a year will pay a 13 percent tax, with a higher levy for those making more. The maximum rate will be 22 percent for incomes beyond $573,000.
The new rules will also increase the company income tax rate from 20 percent to 25 percent.
Putin said the rule will affect less than 3.2 percent of Russia’s taxpayers. Officials estimate that the reform will bring in $29 billion in additional federal revenue next year.
The new regime replaces the 13 percent flat tax rate first imposed in 2001, which was hailed for improving revenue collection and fighting tax evasion.
But analysts told AP that the reform seeks to reduce Moscow’s reliance on oil revenues as Western nations tighten sanctions against Russian oil exports.
Meanwhile, the Russian parliament is preparing a draft law to ban the adoption of children by citizens of countries that recognize the right to change gender, RFE reported separately.
The ban will target nations that permit gender change through medical procedures or on official documents.
According to the speaker of the lower house of parliament Vyacheslav Volodin, the bill will effectively bar citizens of NATO countries from adopting Russian children. The changes will expand the 2012 Dima Yakovlev law, which already prohibits US citizens from adopting Russian children.
Try, Try Harder
SUDAN
Sudan’s warring factions began a new round of ceasefire talks in Switzerland this week, the United Nations confirmed, negotiations aimed at protecting civilians and delivering humanitarian aid to millions affected by the 15-month-long civil conflict, the Voice of America reported.
Delegates of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) held their second day of discussions in Geneva on Friday with the involvement of the world body.
The talks began on a challenging note Thursday when one delegation failed to show up, although UN officials confirmed the discussions were now ongoing, Agence France-Presse noted.
The delegations are not meeting directly but are participating in “proximity talks” with UN secretary-general António Guterres’s envoy, Ramtane Lamamra, mediating.
The main focus of the Geneva talks is to ensure the distribution of humanitarian aid and the protection of civilians. The delegations consist of senior representatives, including humanitarian, security, and military specialists. The duration of the talks remains uncertain, but the UN stressed the need for agreements on local ceasefires to safeguard civilians and facilitate aid.
Sudan’s conflict erupted in April 2023 following a dispute between Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan of the SAF and the RSF’s Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The conflict has resulted in nearly 19,000 deaths and 33,000 injured, and created the world’s worst displacement crisis: According to the UN, 12.7 million people have been displaced, with 10.5 million people dispersed in Sudan and the remaining 2.2 million fleeing to neighboring countries.
The World Food Programme estimates that 18 million people are suffering from acute hunger, while the World Health Organization noted that nearly 15 million require urgent health assistance.
Previous cease-fire talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, collapsed late last year, making the current Geneva discussions crucial.
Still, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric warned against high expectations, saying, “We need to give it a little bit of breathing room.”
DISCOVERIES
Counting the Days
More than 2,000 years ago, the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict celestial movements through a complex system of gears cast in bronze.
Hailed as the world’s oldest computer, the artifact was first discovered in 1901 at the site of a Mediterranean shipwreck and has sparked the curiosity of researchers and the public ever since.
It even inspired the creative team behind the Indiana Jones franchise to create a fictionalized version of the object in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”.
Now, two astronomers from the University of Glasgow have released a new study on the device published in the Horological Journal that focuses on the mechanism’s calendar ring.
Previously thought to be a solar calendar followed by the ancient Egyptians and marked with 365 holes, researchers Graham Woan and Joseph Bayley believe it functioned instead as a lunar calendar with in fact only 354 holes, aligning with the lunar year.
The duo employed Bayesian analysis, a statistical method relying on probability to analyze incomplete data. They examined the spacing and positions of surviving holes and fragments, concluding that the ring likely had 354 or 355 holes.
The team also employed techniques from gravitational wave astronomy, which are usually used to study cosmic phenomena, with their findings challenging the prevailing view that the ring was a solar calendar.
Andrew Thoeni, a co-author of a prior study in 2020 on the device that came to similar conclusions, praised the new research.
“We are very happy that more scholars are now accepting and validating our findings,” he told Live Science.
However, Tony Freeth, an expert on the device, disputes the study’s conclusions, countering that the mechanism already includes a precise lunar calendar, making another redundant, the New York Times wrote.
Woan acknowledged the controversial nature of their conclusion but stands by their findings.
“We hope that our findings about the Antikythera mechanism, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks,” he said in a statement.
Thank you for reading or listening to GlobalPost. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can become one by going to globalpost/subscribe.
