Released Russian arms dealer Bout joins ultranationalist party

 Viktor Bout was freed last week from a 25-year US prison sentence in swap for basketball star Brittney Griner.

Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was freed last week from US custody in a prisoner swap for American basketball star Brittney Griner, has joined the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), according to the party’s leader, a Kremlin loyalist.

On Telegram on Monday, LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky said “the party card of the Liberal Democratic Party” had been “personally handed” to Bout.

“I am sure that Viktor Bout – a strong-willed and courageous person – will take a worthy place in it. Welcome to our ranks!,” he wrote in a post that included a picture of the two men.

Founded in 1991, the LDPR espouses a hardline, ultranationalist ideology that demands Russia reconquer the countries of the former Soviet Union.

It has been one of the most vehement supporters of the invasion of Ukraine, often calling for a more severe approach from Moscow.

In recent years, the party has assumed a subordinate role in Russia’s political system but provides token opposition to the ruling United Russia bloc while remaining aligned with the Kremlin on most issues.

Bout returned to Russia on December 8 after being released from a 25-year prison term in exchange for Griner, who was arrested in mid-February after officials at Moscow airport when cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage.

Griner, who the US State Department has said was “wrongfully detained”, was sentenced to nine years in prison in August.

Bout had been arrested by US authorities in Thailand in 2008, with prosecutors charging that his extensive arms smuggling in hotspots across the world amounted to material support of “terrorism”. The Kremlin has maintained the arrest was politically motivated.

Dubbed the “merchant of death”, Bout has also been implicated in violating or contributing to violating UN arms embargoes in Angola, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The prisoner swap came during the ninth month of Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, a conflict that tanked already strained ties between Washington and Moscow and complicated release negotiations.

In Russia, Bout’s release was viewed as a victory for Moscow.

Meanwhile, the administration of US President Joe Biden faced criticism for agreeing to the exchange, with detractors citing the disparity in the severity of charges against Bout and Griner.

Biden critics were particularly upset that US officials were unable to secure the release of Paul Whelan, a former marine serving a 16-year sentence for alleged espionage in Russia, in the deal.

The LDPR has a history of recruiting controversial personalities into Russian politics, with its founder and long-time leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky gaining a reputation as a political showman for his outrageous stunts and eccentric behaviour before his death in April.

In 2007, Andrey Lugovoy a former KGB agent wanted in Britain for the murder the previous year of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, was elected to parliament for the LDPR.

In his first interview since his release, Bout told the state-run Russia Today channel that the West sought to “destroy and divide Russia” in the years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Bloomberg Report: Ghana Cedi Posts World’s Biggest Gain Against US Dollar

 Bloomberg has reported that the Ghana Cedi last week posted the world’s biggest gain against the US Dollar as Ghana starts reorganising local debt.

It said the Ghana cedi took the title of the world’s best performer against the dollar last week amid optimism the country was moving closer to unlocking an International Monetary Fund bailout.

“The cedi has rallied 10 percent in the past five days, the biggest advance among about 150 currencies tracked by Bloomberg. That’s a turnaround for an exchange rate that had lost half of its value this year and occupied the bottom slot in the charts,” the report stated.

The gains came even as Ghana put its local-currency sovereign bonds in what Fitch Ratings described as a “default-like process,” and the holders of its dollar bonds braced for capital losses. The restructuring is needed to put Ghana’s debt on a sustainable path and secure a $3 billion IMF loan.

“The currency was the cheapest in Africa, more than 30% undervalued versus its 25-year history last week, so some rebound after the huge fall recently isn’t that surprising,” said Charles Robertson, the global chief economist at Renaissance Capital Ltd. in London. “Also we have the IMF in town, which should pave the way for dollar support,” it added.

Source: Bloomberg

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American Black feminist, activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes dies, 84

 Hughes was a powerful American voice when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class

Pioneering Black-American feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a community activist who toured the United States speaking with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and who appears with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.

Hughes, also a child welfare advocate, died on December 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, who said the cause was old age.

Hughes and Steinem, a journalist and political activist, forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.

In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on October 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes became an activist at an early age, according to a family obituary.

She organised the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city. She also established a community centre on Manhattan’s West Side, offering daycare, job training, advocacy training and more to many families.

By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and others.

In the late 1960s, she set up the West 80th Street Childcare Center, providing daycare and also support for parents. It was there that she met Steinem, who was writing a story about the centre. They went on to become friends and speaking partners, addressing gender and race issues at college campuses, community centres and other venues across the country.

In the early 1970s, Hughes also helped found, with Steinem, the Women’s Action Alliance, a broad network of feminist activists aiming to coordinate resources and push for equality on a national level.

By the 1980s, Hughes had moved to Harlem and opened Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman. But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone programme.

She would remember some of her experiences in her 2000 book, Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner City Is This Anyway!: One Woman’s Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone.

In Ms Magazine, Laura L Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, With Her Fist Raised, came out last year, said the activist “defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care”.

She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Twenty-Seven Bodies Dumped By The Roadside In Zambia

 The bodies of 27 people, believed to be migrants from Ethiopia, have been “dumped” by the roadside in Ngwerere area north of Zambia’s capital Lusaka.

They likely suffocated to death while in transit, Police Spokesperson Danny Mwale told the BBC.
One survivor found “gasping for air” has been rushed to a local hospital, he said.
Zambia is a transit point for migrants, mostly from the Horn of Africa, who want to reach South Africa.

Mr Mwale said residents of Ngwerere found the bodies on Sunday at 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT).
He said the police believe the migrants are Ethiopian nationals based on the identity documents found on them.

“Our preliminary investigations indicate that a total number of 28 persons, all males aged between 20 and 38, were dumped in Meanwood Nkhosi along Chiminuka road in Ngwerere area by unknown people,” the police said in a statement.

The bodies have been taken to Zambia University Teaching Hospital mortuary.
In neighbouring Malawi, the authorities discovered 25 bodies of Ethiopian migrants in a mass grave in October.

The police there said they had evidence to link the stepson of Malawi’s ex-President Peter Mutharika to the grim discovery.

Source: BBC

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Prince William says he will ‘NEVER’ watch Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries

 Prince William reportedly said he will ‘never’ watch Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries and told his friends to not ‘fuel the conflict’ by retaliating to any barbs from the show.

The Prince of Wales is said to be more focused on ‘looking to the future’ and ‘getting on with the job’, rather than engaging in a ‘tit-for-tat’ battle with the Duke and Duchess of sussex.

Despite the friction between the two couples, they will still be sending Christmas presents to each other’s children- but there will be no gift exchange between the adults.

A friend of Prince William told the Sunday Time: ‘He says he will never watch it and I know he definitely won’t.’ Another source confirmed the statement as: ‘Correct.’

The King and Queen will not watch the six-part series either, according to another friend said, but the royal family are said to be keeping track of the headlines.

Harry had hoped that his brother and his father King Charles would watch the docuseries to get a better idea of what he and Meghan have had to go through.

Meanwhile, royal sources have dismissed claims made by Meghan that she was wholly unprepared for royal life as ‘total lies’.

The Duchess of Sussex claimed in the series that she had no idea what a walk-about was, had to Google the national anthem and did not know how to curtsy – embarrassingly giving a demonstration of her first attempt, much to the obvious discomfort of her husband.

But a royal source told the Sunday Times that Meghan was in fact given a 30-point dossier about her future role by Harry’s then private secretary Ed Lane Fox six months before their wedding and was provided with a list of experts who could help her.

Another claim that has been cast into doubt is that Meghan was told she couldn’t invite her niece Ashleigh Hale, the daughter of her estranged half-sister Samantha Markle, to her wedding.

‘That just didn’t happen,’ a source told the paper. ‘We never gave any advice, steer or guidance on who of her family or friends should or shouldn’t come to her wedding.

‘I have a very clear memory of her [Meghan] saying that she had a niece who she would in other circumstances have liked to invite, but she didn’t want to invite her because it would have put her under intense scrutiny.’

The part of the docu-series said to have upset Prince William the most, according to friends, was Harry’s suggestion that his brother married Kate because she ‘fits the mould’ rather than for love.

Harry said in the documentary: ‘I think for so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mould as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with.

‘The difference between making decisions with your head, or your heart.

‘And my mum certainly made most of her decisions – if not all of them – from her heart. And I am my mother’s son’.

Meghan also recalled her awkward first meeting with William and Kate in episode two, while Harry again seems to snub his brother in the trailer for the second volume by failing to include the Prince and Princess of Wales in any of the plethora of wedding pictures that flashed up on the screen.

The couple have also received criticism over the series for attacking British institutions as they discussed their experiences – including racism- and almost half of Britons are arguing that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex should be stripped of their titles as a result.

A survey by the Mail on Sunday found that 44 per cent of people think that they should lose their titles, while only 19 per cent disagreed.

A similar proportion, 42 per cent, think Harry should be excluded from the line of succession, with 23 per cent disagreeing.

Nearly one third, 28 per cent, think they should be disallowed from attending the Coronation of King Charles III, with 31 per cent disagreeing.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

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