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Six crew from German ship kidnapped in Nigerian waters

BERLIN (Reuters) – Six crew from a German container vessel have been kidnapped in Nigerian waters, a shipping company said on Tuesday.

Four of those taken are Filipino, and one is a Ukrainian national, according to the Philippines department of labor and Ukrainian foreign ministry.

Kidnapping for ransom is a common problem in parts of Nigeria. A number of foreigners have, in the last few years, been kidnapped in the Niger Delta, source of most of the crude oil which is Nigeria’s economic mainstay.

“The vessel was attacked by pirates on early Saturday morning when it was approaching one of the ports of Nigeria,” said a spokesman for Peter Doehle Schiffahrts KG.

“Six of the crew were taken off the ship and they are now held by kidnappers in Nigeria,” he said. There were no German nationals among the kidnapped but the spokesman declined to say where those abducted were from.

Those kidnapped comprise four Filipinos, one Ukrainian and one Hungarian, officials from the countries involved told Reuters.

At the time of the statement there was no official contact with the kidnappers and the vessel had moved away from Nigerian waters with the 12 remaining crew safe, the spokesman said.

“The top priority is to try and establish contact with the kidnappers and try to have a quick and safe release of our seafarers,” he said.

Germany’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Four of the six abducted crew members are Filipinos, the Philippines labor secretary told Reuters.

An official at Ukraine’s foreign ministry said preliminary information indicated a Ukrainian citizen was among those kidnapped. He gave no further details.

One Hungarian national was also taken, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the rescue operations.

The Hungarian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Additional reporting by Tife Owolabi and Paul Carsten in Abuja, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Karen Lema in Manila and Krisztina Than in Budapest; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Top U.S. military officer seeks to address criticism of fatal Niger operation

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. military officer sought on Monday to tamp down criticism the Pentagon had not been forthcoming about the death of four U.S. soldiers in an ambush in Niger, providing a timeline of the incident and acknowledging unanswered questions remained.

General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the United States Africa Command was conducting an investigation into the Oct. 4 attack. Some lawmakers have criticized the Pentagon for being slow to provide answers.

Dunford acknowledged that a number of issues were still under investigation, including why U.S. forces on the ground waited an hour until they called for support, what type of intelligence was used in the mission and why it took as long as it did to recover a U.S. soldier’s body.

“There has been a lot of speculation about the operation in Niger and there’s a perception that the Department of Defense has not been forthcoming and I thought it would be helpful for me to personally clarify to you what we know today, and to outline what we hope to find out in the ongoing investigation,”

Dunford said in an hour-long news conference.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s handling of condolence messages to the families of the dead soldiers has been criticized by lawmakers in Washington and has raised the profile of the deadly incident.

Dunford said for the first time that U.S. forces on the ground in Niger waited an hour before calling for support.

Within minutes, a U.S. drone located nearby was moved over the firefight and provided intelligence and full-motion video.

French fighter jets arrived above the scene about an hour after that, said Dunford.

“It is important to note that when they didn’t ask for support for that first hour, my judgment would be that that unit thought they could handle the situation without additional support,” Dunford said.

The French fighters did not drop bombs when they arrived, something Dunford said was under investigation.

QUESTIONS FROM LAWMAKERS

Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last week he may consider issuing a subpoena because the White House had not been forthcoming with details of the attack.

On Monday, McCain said lawmakers were getting cooperation and information from the Pentagon and expected a “formal hearing” on Thursday about the ambush.

The attack threw a spotlight on the little-known counterterrorism mission in the West African country, which has about 800 U.S. troops, out of a total of 6,000 U.S. troops in Africa. The United States says it is there to support Niger in fighting Islamist extremists.

The Pentagon said at the time that three soldiers had been killed in the ambush. The body of a fourth soldier, Sergeant La David Johnson, was recovered about two days later.

Dunford said that on Oct. 3, a dozen U.S. soldiers accompanied 30 Nigerien forces on a reconnaissance mission near the village of Tongo Tongo.

After spending the night near the village, the forces were moving back to their base when they came under attack from about 50 enemy fighters, who appeared to be from a local Islamic State affiliate. The militants attacked with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, Dunford said.

“It was planned as a reconnaissance mission,” Dunford said. “What happened after they began to execute, in other words, did the mission change? That is one of the questions that’s being asked,” he said.

CONSIDERED A LOWER-RISK MISSION

The mission had been seen as a relatively lower-risk endeavor for elite U.S. commandos and there was no armed air cover at the time that could carry out air strikes if necessary.

He added there was no indication the soldiers had taken too many risks.

“I don’t have any indication right now to believe or to know that they did anything other than operate within the orders they were given,” Dunford said.

U.S. forces were conducting normal operations in Niger again and the plan was for them to continue to train and advise local partners. Dunford said there had been no discussions about increasing U.S. troops.

A controversy has swirled for a week over how Trump has handled the task of consoling relatives of slain service members.

Myeshia Johnson, the widow of the Army sergeant killed in Niger, said on Monday that Trump had “made me cry even worse” in a condolence call when he said her husband “knew what he signed up for.”

“We owe the families as much information as we can find out about what happened, and we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time,” Dunford said.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Additional reporting by David Alexander, Eric Walsh and Amanda Becker; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Peter Cooney)

Recovering from severe malnutrition in Yemen

By Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – Smiling and sitting down to bread and milk with her family, Yemeni teenager Saida Ahmed Baghili is barely recognizable a year on from the photo of her emaciated frame that came to symbolize the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Baghili now weighs 36kg (80 lb), according to her father, more than triple the 11kg she weighed last October when Reuters first met her at the al-Thawra hospital in Sana’a, where she was undergoing treatment for severe malnutrition.

There the 19-year-old was unable to talk, let alone carry her ghostly, skeletal frame, which is now stronger after weeks of specialist care and time at home.

“Saida’s body got better because she’s eating better, but she’s still having trouble swallowing,” her father Ahmed Baghili said at their home in Hodeidah this month.

“She can only eat milk, biscuits and juice.”

Baghili’s plight reflects that of many families in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, where a two-and-a-half-year war between a Saudi-led Arab coalition and the Iran-allied Houthi movement has claimed 10,000 lives.

A quarter of the 28 million population are starving, according to the United Nations, with half a million children under the age of 5 severely malnourished and at least 2,135 people killed by cholera.

Ahmed Baghili is only able to supply the basics for his family of 10, who live in a parched village on the Red Sea coast.

Saida, whose illness began before the war, is able to help her father tend to a farmer’s cattle in exchange for milk, with their income boosted by Ahmed making deliveries on his motorcycle and donations from humanitarian organizations.

However, he says he doesn’t have enough money to send Saida for further treatment and still fears for her health. Her last appointment with a doctor was in December.

“We’re worried she might relapse and then we wouldn’t be able to do anything because we have nothing. We don’t have the transportation fee, we don’t have the fee for anything,” he said.

Click on http://reut.rs/2gxeJkK to see a related photo essay

(Writing by Patrick Johnston in LONDON; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Iowa pulls request to opt out of Obamacare requirements

By Susan Cornwell

(Reuters) – Iowa on Monday withdrew a request to waive some Obamacare rules to help shore up its struggling healthcare insurance market, marking a setback in efforts by Republican-governed states to sidestep requirements of the Obama-era law.

With open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act – better known as Obamacare – set to start in just over a week, the state announced it would no longer wait to hear if federal officials would approve its request aimed at cutting individual healthcare insurance premiums and widening coverage.

The withdrawal prompted a leading U.S. Senate Republican to urge Congress to approve a bipartisan fix to Obamacare, which President Donald Trump has vowed to scrap.

Iowa was viewed as a test case by some for other states that submitted similar, if far less-reaching, waivers and of how the Trump administration would respond to such requests.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds said the law had not been flexible enough to accommodate the state’s request.

“Ultimately, Obamacare is an inflexible law that Congress must repeal and replace,” the governor said in a statement, adding that premiums under Obamacare had increased by 110 percent for Iowans since 2013.

Iowa sought the waiver after its individual healthcare marketplace shrank to only one insurer for next year, Minnesota-based Medica.

Some of the state’s requests were similar to provisions included in Republican repeal and replace bills this year. For instance, the waiver sought to replace Obamacare’s income-based tax credits with flat age-based credits and eliminate insurer payments that Trump cut off earlier this month.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said the move by Iowa demonstrated the need for repairs to Obamacare that he and Democratic Senator Patty Murray have proposed aimed at stabilizing insurance markets. It would also provide states more flexibility in reshaping some parts of Obamacare.

Trump has sent mixed signals over whether he would support the bipartisan fix. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday that he was willing to bring up the proposal for a vote but needed to know where Trump stood.

Alexander said the bipartisan repair proposal would allow the federal government to approve Iowa’s waiver.

Alexander told reporters that the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan scorekeeper, would soon announce its analysis of the bipartisan repair legislation, possibly on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell,; additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Amanda Becker in Washington; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Chaotic scenes as suspects wheeled around airport where North Korean leader’s brother killed

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Handcuffed, wearing bulletproof vests and under heavily armed guard, the two women accused of murdering the half-brother of North Korea’s leader were pushed around a Malaysian airport in wheelchairs on Tuesday during a court visit to the crime scene.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, a Vietnamese, are charged with murdering Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical nerve agent, at Kuala Lumpur’s budget international terminal on Feb. 13.

Defense lawyers say the women thought they were involved in a prank for a reality TV show when they encountered a man at the airport and did not know they were handling poison.

The two women were brought back to the scene as part of an entourage of court officials, led by trial judge Azmi Ariffin and accompanied by over 200 police officers and dozens of journalists, on a visit to retrace the events that unfolded before, during and after Kim Jong Nam’s death.

Defense lawyers requested the visit after video recordings of the women on airport closed-circuit television were screened in court.

Gooi Soon Seng, Siti Aisyah’s lawyer, said the visit was necessary to verify the surroundings and locations where the prosecution say the murder took place.

“The CCTV footages were taken from various cameras and various places, so from there we couldn’t get a complete picture on how (the incident) took place,” Gooi told a news conference after the visit.

The site visit covered various locations in the terminal shown in the videos, such as a restaurant where Siti Aisyah was seen meeting an unidentified man, the toilets where police witnesses said both women had gone to after the attack on Kim Jong Nam, the clinic where the victim sought medical aid and the taxi stands where both suspects were seen after the attack.

Huong appeared unwell midway through the three-hour site visit, while Siti Aisyah broke down in tears. Both women were then provided wheelchairs.

Defense lawyers later said both Huong and Siti Aisyah were exhausted from being weighed down by their bulletproof vests.

Recordings on Feb. 13 show Huong approaching Kim and grasping his face from behind near the airport’s check-in counters before quickly leaving. Siti Aisyah could not be seen but was identified by a police witness as a figure running in another direction. The videos also show the women heading to separate bathrooms to wash their hands.

Both women were seen meeting with two men, identified only as Mr. Chang and Mr. Y, before Kim Jong Nam’s death. According to police, the men had applied liquid on the women’s hands, and were among four suspects-at-large charged together with the women for the murder.

‘CLOSELY-WATCHED TRIAL’

The airport visit comes as the high-profile trial entered its third week. Twelve witnesses have testified so far.

Forensic and chemical weapons experts said Kim Jong Nam had died of nerve agent poisoning, and that VX had been found on Siti Aisyah and Huong’s clothes. Traces of the poison were also found under Huong’s fingernails.

Prosecutors say Siti Aisyah and Huong conspired with four others who are still at large to kill Kim Jong Nam.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said that Kim Jong Un’s regime was behind his half-brother’s death.

Kim Jong Nam, who was living in exile in Macau, had criticized his family’s dynastic rule of North Korea and his brother had ordered his execution, according to some South Korean lawmakers.

The hearing resumes in court on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff, Writing by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Michael Perry)

UK certain Iran nuclear deal to be preserved, U.S. says remains committed

LONDON (Reuters) – There is absolutely no doubt that a deal between Western powers and Iran to curb its nuclear program will survive despite the U.S. decision not to recertify the deal, Britain’s foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Monday.

Johnson was giving a speech on foreign affairs in London.

U.S. President Donald Trump broke ranks with other major powers earlier this month by refusing to formally certify that Tehran is complying with the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even though international inspectors say it is.

The U.S. Congress now has 60 days since Trump’s action to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact.

U.S. Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood said on Monday Washington would “continue to meet its commitments under the JCPOA and will hold Iran strictly accountable for each and every one of its commitments as well.”

Wood was speaking at a United Nations meeting in New York.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill, writing by Alistair Smout; additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos at the United Nations; Editing by Kate Holton and Sandra Maler)

Snap election not enough to solve crisis, Spain tells Catalan leader

By Paul Day

MADRID (Reuters) – Catalonia’s leader cannot solve its political crisis with Madrid just by calling regional elections, Spain’s justice minister said on Tuesday, dampening hopes of a quick fix for a dispute that has rattled investors and fractured the country.

The Spanish government says it will impose direct rule on Catalonia from Friday to counter an illegal independence push, invoking never-before-used powers to fire the government of the northeastern region that is critical to the country’s economy.

The Catalan parliament will meet on Thursday to agree on a response to Madrid, something many analysts said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence.

Secessionists in Catalonia say that an independence referendum held on Oct. 1 – which drew only a 43 percent turnout and was mostly shunned by Catalans who wish to remain in Spain – has accorded them a mandate to claim statehood.

Catalonia said on Monday it was confident all officials including police would defy attempts by Madrid to enforce direct rule, raising fears among Spain’s European allies of separatist contagion affecting other parts of the continent.

Spanish political leaders, influential business lobbies and most Catalonia newspapers have urged Puigdemont to call a regional election before he is stripped out of his authority.

They say direct rule from Madrid, which was the norm during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, would be a humiliation for Catalonia and pose a serious risk of social and economic unrest.

Puigdemont has remained silent on the matter of elections. Some of his senior advisers have said holding a vote is a possibility while others have ruled it out. His pro-secession allies are also divided.

The Spanish government said a snap election would be a first step but Puigdemont would also have to withdraw an ambiguous declaration of independence he made earlier this month.

“When the government proposes an option so extreme as Article 155 (powers to cancel Catalonia’s autonomous status), it’s because we believe that there has been a serious failure by Puigdemont to meet his obligations,” Justice Minister Rafael Catala said during a radio interview.

“Everything is not fixed just by calling an election.”

Catala said that if Puigdemont appeared before the Spanish Senate, which plans to authorize direct rule on Friday, it would be a positive step in finding a solution to the conflict.

The Madrid government has refused to meet with the Catalan leader until he drops the call for independence, however, and Catala said any appearance by Puigdemont had to be within a legal and constitutional framework.

“If his appearance is within the constitution and the law we’ll be delighted…But if it’s just to ratify his position on Catalonia’s independence, sadly we will not be able to do anything else than continuing with the measures already set by the government,” said Catala.

(Writing by Julien Toyer; editing by Jesus Aguado and Mark Heinrich)

Senators push bill requiring warrant for U.S. data under spy law

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of at least 10 U.S. senators plans to introduce on Tuesday legislation that would substantially reform aspects of the National Security Agency’s warrantless internet surveillance program, according to congressional aides.

The effort, led by Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Rand Paul, would require a warrant for queries of data belonging to any American collected under the program. The bill’s introduction is likely to add uncertainty to how Congress will renew a controversial portion of a spying law due to expire on Dec. 31.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is considered by U.S. intelligence officials to be among their most vital tools used to combat national and cyber security threats and help protect American allies.

It allows U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on and store vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States.

The surveillance program, classified details of which were exposed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, also incidentally scoops up communications of Americans, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas.

Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a practice that the USA Rights Act authored by Wyden and Paul would end.

The measure is expected to be introduced with support from a wide berth of civil society groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and FreedomWorks, a Wyden spokesman said.

It would renew Section 702 for four years with additional transparency and oversight provisions, such as allowing individuals to more easily raise legal challenges against the law and expand the oversight jurisdiction of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a government privacy watchdog.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives earlier this month introduced legislation seeking to add privacy protections to Section 702, including a partial restriction to the FBI’s ability to access U.S. data when seeking evidence of a crime.

But that was criticized by privacy groups as too narrow.

Separately, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to privately vote on Tuesday on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 that privacy advocates say will lack their reform priorities.

Wyden sent a letter on Monday urging committee leaders to allow a public vote, saying the bill “will have enormous impact on the security, liberty, and constitutional rights of the American people” and should be debated in the open.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Indonesia passes law to ban organizations deemed against its ideology

By Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Around 1,000 Indonesians, led by hardline Islamist groups, protested outside parliament on Tuesday as lawmakers approved a presidential decree banning any civil organizations deemed to go against the country’s secular state ideology.

Tuesday’s approval puts into law a policy President Joko Widodo set in a decree in July. The policy was aimed at containing hardline groups who have cast a shadow over the long-standing reputation for religious tolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

“We have seen mass organizations that are against the Pancasila (state ideology) and have created social conflict,” said Arya Bima, a lawmaker in favour of the policy. “This law doesn’t impede freedom of organization or assembly, it strengthens it.”

In late 2016 and early this year, groups such as Hizb-ut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), which call for Islamic law to be imposed in Indonesia, led mass street rallies attacking Jakarta’s governor, a Christian, whom they accused of insulting Islam.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who in April lost an election to get a new term, was jailed one month later after being convicted of blasphemy, in a court ruling widely criticized in Indonesia and overseas as unjust.

The presidential decree Widodo signed in July ordered the disbanding of all organizations deemed to be in conflict with the secular state ideology. HTI, which seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate, was the first organization to be disbanded under the policy.

Pancasila or ‘five principles’ is Indonesia’s state ideology, which includes belief in god, the unity of the country, social justice and democracy, and which enshrines religious diversity in an officially secular system.

VIOLATION OF RIGHTS?

Under the new law, anyone who “embraces, develops of spreads ideology that is in conflict with the (state ideology) Pancasila” can face imprisonment of six months to life, according to a copy of the draft law reviewed by Reuters.

Rights activists and civil organizations have decried the move, saying it harks back to the era of authoritarian ruler Suharto, who demanded loyalty to Pancasila and took repressive measures against some opponents.

Opposition lawmaker Al Muzamil Yusuf said the new law could “violate democratic rights and remove checks and balances on the government”.

During the protest outside parliament on Tuesday, around 5,200 police and military personnel stood guard around the complex in central Jakarta.

A hashtag supporting Widodo’s policy was a top trending topic on Indonesian Twitter.

“This policy is not about (Widodo) or any political party, it’s about safeguarding the unity of the country,” said user @Senopati.

(Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Richard Borsuk)

Listeria risk prompts Meijer to recall produce in six U.S. states

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Retailer Meijer Inc said it was recalling packaged vegetables in six U.S. states because of possible contamination from Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, which can cause fatal food poisoning in young children, pregnant women and elderly or frail people.

Meijer, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said there were no illnesses reported as of Sunday.

The recall affects 35 products and includes vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower and asparagus as well as party trays sold in Meijer-branded plastic or foam packaging in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Wisconsin between Sept. 27 and Oct. 20, the company said on Saturday.

In February, Meijer recalled its Meijer-branded Colby and Colby Jack cheese sold through its deli counters because of potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 1,600 people develop a serious form of infection known as listeriosis each year, and 260 die from the disease, making it the third most deadly form of food poisoning in the United States.

“The infection is most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults aged 65 or older and people with weakened immune systems,” the CDC said on its website. Symptoms include fever and diarrhea and can start the same day of exposure or as much as 70 days later.

(Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Peter Cooney)

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