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page 23 CONGO Congo President Sassou Nguesso wins re-election Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso has extended his 32 years in power, winning presidential elections in the first round with 60 percent of the vote, the interior minister said. Raymond Zephyrin Mboulou, the interior minister, announced the results on Thursday after a tense weekend poll held […]

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CONGO

Congo President Sassou Nguesso wins re-election

Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso has extended his 32 years in power, winning presidential elections in the first round with 60 percent of the vote, the interior minister said.

Raymond Zephyrin Mboulou, the interior minister, announced the results on Thursday after a tense weekend poll held under a communications blackout.

The official count gave Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas 15 percent of the vote and General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko came third with a little less than 14 percent.

On Wednesday, the two opposition candidates rejected partial results released by the Republic of Congo’s electoral commission, which gave the country’s long-time ruler 67 percent of votes.

Sassou Nguesso came to power in 1979 and governed the Congo Republic until 1992, when he lost an election. He regained power in 1997 after a civil war and then won elections in 2002 and 2009 amid allegations of fraud.

The constitution was changed by referendum last year, lifting term and age limits that would have excluded him from running again.

BELGIUM

Belgian ministers offer to quit over security lapses

Belgium’s interior and justice ministers offered to resign on Thursday over the failure to track an Islamic State militant expelled twice by Turkey as a suspected fighter last year and who blew himself up at Brussels airport this week.

Ibrahim El Bakraoui was one of three identified suspected suicide bombers who hit the airport and a metro train, killing at least 31 people and wounding some 270 on Tuesday in the worst attack in Belgian history. At least one other man seen with them on airport security cameras is on the run and a fifth suspected bomber filmed in the metro attack may be dead or alive.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon and Justice Minister Koen Geens tendered their resignations to Prime Minister Charles Michel, who asked them to stay on. “In time of war, you cannot leave the field,” Jambon, a right-wing Flemish nationalist, said.

The security lapses in a country that is home to the European Union and NATO have drawn international criticism of an apparent reluctance to tackle Islamist radicals effectively.

KENYA

Kenya exam board sacked over cheating allegations

Kenya’s schools exam board has been dissolved over “irregularities” in last year’s secondary school exams, which saw 5,000 results cancelled.

It was reported that exam papers were shared on WhatsApp before exams. The chief executive and eight other KNEC officials have been ordered to make police statements

In October last year, it was reported that exam questions were being sold for 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($10; £7). But KNEC (Kenya National Examinations Council) head said in reaction that the questions were fake.

He urged students not to trust the questions being shared on WhatsApp and went ahead with the exams which he insisted were credible.

However, when the results were released at the beginning of March, Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i announced that more than 5,000 exams had been cancelled.

BOSNIA

Ex-Serb leader guilty of genocide, jailed for 40 years

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted by U.N. judges of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime in Europe since World War Two, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Karadzic, 70, the former president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic, was found guilty on 10 out of 11 charges brought by war crimes prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He would appeal the decision, his legal adviser said.

“The accused was the sole person within Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Republic) with the power to prevent the killing of the Bosnian Muslim males,” said presiding judge O-Gon Kwok, in a reference to the 8,000 killed at Srebrenica.

“Far from preventing it, he ordered they be transferred elsewhere to be killed,” the judge said.

The three-judge panel said Karadzic was “at the apex of power,” heading the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and Supreme Commander of its armed forces, when crimes were committed by his troops.

Karadzic’s legal adviser Peter Robinson said Karadzic was “disappointed by the verdict, astonished by the reasoning and he wants to appeal.”

BELGIUM

Surviving Paris attacks suspect wants to return to ‘explain himself’

Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in November’s Paris attacks, will no longer fight extradition to France as he had vowed to do but instead now wants to return to “explain himself”, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Abdeslam, a French citizen, was arrested in Brussels on March 18 after a four-month manhunt in the wake of the Nov. 13 shooting and suicide bombing rampage by Islamic State militants that killed 130 people in Paris.

His lawyer, Sven Mary, told reporters in Brussels that he hoped Abdeslam’s return to Paris could happen “as soon as possible … Regarding going to France, I think it’s really a question of weeks”.

Investigations into suicide bombings in Brussels on Tuesday – also claimed by Islamic State and in which at least 31 people died – have pointed in Abdeslam’s direction as well, indicating that the same jihadist network was involved in both the Paris and Brussels attacks, police said.

SYRIA

Syrian government forces enter Islamic State-held Palmyra

Syrian government forces fought their way into Palmyra on Thursday as the army backed by Russian air cover sought to recapture the historic city from Islamic State (IS) insurgents, Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian army earlier this month launched a concerted offensive to retake Palmyra, which the ultra-hardline Islamist militants seized in May 2015, to open a road to the mostly IS-held eastern province of Deir al-Zor.

Islamic State has blown up ancient temples and tombs since capturing Palmyra, something the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO has called a war crime. The city, located at a crossroads in central Syria, is surrounded mostly by desert.

The state-run news channel Ikhbariya broadcast images from just outside Palmyra on Thursday and said government fighters had taken over a hotel district in the west.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army had advanced into the hotel district just to the southwest of the city and reached the start of a residential area, after a rapid advance the day before brought the army and its allies right up to its outskirts.

RUSSIA

Kerry in Moscow to urge Putin to soften Assad stance

US Secretary of State John Kerry met President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Thursday to try to convince him to support an end to Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria.

Putin had warm words for Kerry at the start of their meeting, thanking him for his “business-like” approach and hailing the United States for helping broker a ceasefire in the war-torn country.

“We understand that what we have managed to achieve on Syria has only been possible thanks to the constructive position of the political leadership in the US, the position of President Obama,” Putin said.

Kerry lauded the truce between government forces and the opposition that has seen fighting drop and called to “make progress even deeper” towards finding a lasting political solution to the conflict.

“It’s fair to say, Mr President, that the serious approach with which we have been able to cooperate with one another has made a difference for the lives of the people of Syria,” Kerry said

UNITED STATES

US charges Iranians over cyber-attacks

The US has charged seven Iranians for allegedly hacking nearly 50 financial companies and a New York dam.

The attacks, occurring from 2011 to 2013, are believed to have been co-ordinated from Iranian companies.

The US Department of Justice revealed an indictment against the seven, believed to be working for their government from inside Iran.

The indictment calls them “experienced computer hackers” and officials said the attacks were a “wake-up call”.

It is the first time the US is charging people associated with a national government with hacking into US infrastructure for major industries like finance and water.

PALESTINE

Israeli soldier shot Palestinian attacker dead

An Israeli soldier has been detained after a video emerged showing him apparently shooting a Palestinian in the head as he lay wounded and motionless on the ground.

The Palestinian was soon declared dead. He was one of two attackers who had earlier stabbed another Israeli soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The Israeli military said the shooting was a “grave breach of IDF (Israel Defense Forces) values”.

“In light of the initial probe into the incident, a military police investigation has been launched,” the Israeli army said on Thursday.

The shooting occurred just minutes after two Palestinian attackers stabbed an IDF soldier at a checkpoint in Hebron.

AFGHANISTAN

7 Afghan police killed in insider attack

At least seven police officers were killed in a suspected insider attack in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, authorities said.

The early morning incident Thursday happened at a security outpost in the district of Arghandab.

Officials said the slain members of the Afghan Local police, or ALP, were asleep when three of their colleagues sprayed them with bullets and fled the scene along with the victims’ weapons and ammunition.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility and said the attackers safely rejoined the insurgent ranks.