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One hundred people were killed on Saturday in attacks on two villages in western Niger, Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said following one of the deadliest days in recent memory for a country ravaged by Islamist violence.
Rafini announced the death toll in remarks broadcast on national television on Sunday from a visit to the zone, near the border with Mali. He did not say who was responsible.
Security sources said on Saturday that at least 70 civilians had been killed in simultaneous raids by suspected Islamist militants on the villages of Tchombangou and Zaroumdareye.
Niger has suffered repeated attacks by militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State near its borders with Mali and Burkina Faso. The violence is part of a wider security crisis in West Africa’s Sahel region that has unnerved Western allies like France, who have poured troops and resources into the region.
Niger has also seen tit-for-tat killings between rival ethnic communities that have been stoked by the jihadist violence and competition for scarce resources.
Saturday’s attacks came on the same day that the electoral commission announced the results from the first round of the election to replace President Mahamadou Issoufou, who is stepping down after a decade in power.
Ruling party candidate Mohamed Bazoum, who finished in first, expressed his condolences on Sunday to the victims.
The attacks, he said in a video he posted on social media, “remind us that terrorist groups constitute a grave threat to cohesion within communities unlike any other”.
Bazoum will face former President Mahamane Ousmane in a second round run-off expect described the incident as “another clarion call for united action by African leaders against terrorism.”
“We are facing grave security challenges on account of the evil campaign of indiscriminate violence by terrorists in the Sahel and only united action can help us defeat these vicious enemies of humanity,” said Buhari in Abuja on Sunday, according to a statement from the State House.
The United Nations strongly condemned the terrorist attacks, which “led to the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians.”
“I express my condolence to the Niger Mission to the UN and the people of Niger,” said the UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir in a tweet on Sunday.
The Secretary-General, António Guterres, said in a statement that he hopes the Nigerien authorities will “spare no effort in identifying and swiftly bringing the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice while enhancing the protection of civilians.”
A British judge has rejected a US request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to America, ruling that such a move would be “oppressive” by reason of his mental health.

The 49-year-old Australian has been charged in the US under the Espionage Act for his role in publishing classified military and diplomatic cables.
“I have decided that extradition would be oppressive and I order his discharge,” judge Vanessa Baraitser said in her ruling Monday.
Assange, on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy, holds up a United Nations report in February 2016. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Assange was being arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom.
A van displays images of Assange and Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Friday, April 5. A senior Ecuadorian official said no decision has been made to expel Assange from the embassy. According to WikiLeaks tweets, sources had told the organization that Assange could be kicked out of the embassy within "hours to days."
Photos: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
A van displays images of Assange and Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who supplied thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Friday, April 5. A senior Ecuadorian official said no decision has been made to expel Assange from the embassy. According to WikiLeaks tweets, sources had told the organization that Assange could be kicked out of the embassy within “hours to days.”
A screen grab from video footage shows the dramatic moment when Assange was <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/11/uk/julian-assange-arrested-gbr-intl/index.html" target="_blank">hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by police</a> on April 11, 2019. Assange was arrested for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. Officers made the initial move to detain Arrange after Ecuador withdrew his asylum and invited authorities into the embassy, citing the Australian's bad behavior.
Photos: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
A screen grab from video footage shows the dramatic moment when Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy by police on April 11, 2019. Assange was arrested for “failing to surrender to the court” over a
Assange gestures from the window of a prison van as he is driven into Southwark Crown Court in London on May 1, 2019, before being sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching his bail conditions in 2012.

In October 2011, a month after WikiLeaks released more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables, Assange speaks to demonstrators from the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Assange addresses the media and his supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012. A few days earlier, Ecuador announced that it had granted asylum to Assange. In his public address, Assange demanded that the United States drop its "witch hunt" against WikiLeaks.
Photos: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Assange addresses the media and his supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on August 19, 2012. A few days earlier, Ecuador announced that it had granted asylum to Assange. In his public address, Assange demanded that the United States drop its “witch hunt” against WikiLeaks.
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‘Tear down these prison walls’
At the start of the extradition hearing in February 2020, Assange’s legal team argued that Trump was trying to “make an example” of Assange as the trove of classified defense documents relating to Iraq and Afghanistan published by WikiLeaks revealed evidence of war crimes.
Lawyers for the US government argued that by publishing the diplomatic cables in an unredacted form, Assange had put the lives of sources and informants in “immediate” danger, and damaged the capabilities of US forces carrying out operations abroad.
“Reporting or journalism is not a license for criminality,” James Lewis, Counsel for the US government told the court.
Stella Moris, Assange’s partner and the mother of the couple’s two children, said on Monday that she was “pleased that the court has recognized the seriousness and inhumanity of what he has endured, and what he faces,” but noted that the charges against Assange had not been dropped.
Moris added that she is “extremely concerned” that the US government has decided to appeal the decision, saying that the move “continues to want to punish Julian and make him disappear into the deepest, darkest hole of the US prison system for the rest of his life.”
Addressing Trump, she said, “Mr. President, tear down these prison walls [so] that our little boys have their father. Free Julian, free the press, free us all.”
Moris has launched a Twitter campaign asking the US president to pardon Assange before he leaves office.
Julian Assange's lawyers say he tried to warn the US government about release of sensitive files. He was told to call back
Julian Assange’s lawyers say he tried to warn the US government about release of sensitive files. He was told to call back
Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s expert on human rights in Europe said in a September 2020 statement that the implications of the extradition order could not be overstated.
“Silence this one man, and the US and its accomplices will gag others, spreading fear of persecution and prosecution over a global media community already under assault in the US and in many other countries worldwide,” she said.
Assange has been held in Belmarsh prison — one of the most secure facilities in England and Wales — since he was arrested by UK authorities in April 2019, after Ecuador revoked his right to political asylum.
He had been living at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge since 2012, to avoid extradition to Sweden for an investigation over allegations of sexual assault and rape. Assange has always denied all of those allegations, which have all since been dropped.
During a news conference on Monday, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told reporters that his country planned on offering Assange political asylum.
He also welcomed the British court’s ruling, “because he is a journalist and deserves a chance.”
Nils Melzer, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on torture, has previously said that Assange displays “extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma” after being subjected to several years’ worth of “progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
Melzer met Assange in Belmarsh Prison in May 2019, and concluded that his health had been “seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years.”
He added that Assange was subjected to “oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy,” as well as “deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation.”
Moris said in an editorial published in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper on Saturday that Assange had “been acting in the same way as any other journalist would, in attempting to hold the powerful to account.”
Unless you are a very close student of politics, you likely don’t know the name Chip Roy.
But the Texas Republican House member did something very worth noting on Sunday night: He objected to the seating of 67 House members — Democrats and Republicans — from six states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) where President Donald Trump and other Republicans have alleged, without proof, that there was widespread voter fraud.
As Roy explained in a statement explaining his objection (bolding is mine):
“I do not make this objection lightly and take no pleasure in it, but believe that I am compelled to do so because a number of my colleagues — whom I hold in high regard — have publicly stated that they plan to object to the acceptance of electors from those particular six states due to their deeply held belief that those states conducted elections plagued by statewide, systemic fraud and abuse that leaves them absolutely no way for this chamber or our constituents to trust the validity of their elections.
“Such allegations — if true — raise significant doubts about the elections of at least some of the members of the United States House of Representatives that, if not formally addressed, could cast a dark cloud of suspicion over the validity of this body for the duration of the 117th Congress. After all, those representatives were elected through the very same systems — with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials — as were the electors chosen for the President of the United States under the laws of those states, which have become the subject of national controversy.”
The shorter version of Roy’s statement goes like this: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
What Roy slyly did with his objection to seating the delegations from six states is shine a bright light on the incredible hypocrisy being exhibited by his Republican colleagues. What he is arguing for is consistency. If these members of Congress truly believe, contra evidence, that there was some sort of massive voter fraud that kept Trump from beating President-elect Joe Biden, then they have to also believe that their own reelections were also compromised by this fraud.
Right? Right!
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Except that, well, consistency and logic aren’t big sellers in the current iteration of the Republican Party.
Witness Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs. In early December, he told CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb that while he didn’t dispute that he won his own race in the state’s 4th district, he did “dispute the presidential election results,” adding that it’s “almost inexplainable” that Trump lost, since Republicans did so well in other races in the state.
To believe that — as Biggs appears to — you have to think that the vote in Biggs’ 4th district, where Trump won with 60%, was above board, and it was the other eight House districts in the state where the election chicanery occurred! Man, what a complex plot! (Important note: There is zero evidence that there was any widespread election fraud in Arizona — or anywhere else.)
What Biggs — and the rest of the 140-plus House Republicans who plan to object to the Electoral College results on Wednesday — are saying is that somehow the vote was only problematic and fraudulent at the presidential level. They won fair and square. It’s Trump who lost because of Democratic cheating.
This is, of course, totally ridiculous. The vote isn’t fair when the result is what you want and rigged when the result doesn’t go your way. Either the vote in these six states was hopelessly corrupted — up and down the ballot — or it wasn’t.
That Roy was the only Republican willing to stand up and force his colleagues to look at their hypocrisy in the face is a telling indicator of just how low the GOP has sunk in an attempt to appease Trump.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this analysis incorrectly referred to Rep. Chip Roy as a retiring congressman. He is now serving his second term in Congress after winning reelection in November 2020.
Experienced prosecutors, election lawyers and some public officials have piled on calling for criminal investigations into whether President Donald Trump broke election fraud laws when he pressured Georgia officials on a phone call Saturday to “find” 11,870 votes that would reverse his loss in the state.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reimposed a lockdown in England on Monday as a more transmissible variant of Covid-19 fuels a surge in infections and hospitalizations in the country.

“It is clear that we need to do more to bring this new variant under control,” Johnson said. “That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home.”
During his televised address to the nation, Johnson reimposed measures seen during the first lockdown last spring, including closures of secondary and primary schools to all except the children of key workers and vulnerable children. He added that this means it will not be “possible or fair for all exams to go ahead this summer as normal,” and alternative arrangements are being put in place.
People will be allowed to leave their homes for limited reasons like shopping for essentials, exercise, and medical assistance. Johnson also said people could still leave home “to escape domestic abuse” — an issue that arose earlier during the pandemic, as isolation and lockdown conditions exacerbated barriers to escape for victims of domestic violence.
International departures are now limited to those who have “a legally permitted reason,” such as work.
Outdoor sports venues will have to close. But unlike spring’s lockdown, nurseries will not be shuttered, elite sports can go ahead, and places of worship will remain open on the basis that attendees adhere to social distancing rules.
The lockdown is expected to remain in place at least through the middle of February.
Europe has kept its schools open for much of the pandemic. Now closures loom
Europe has kept its schools open for much of the pandemic. Now closures loom
His announcement follows that of Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who announced a lockdown that will begin on midnight, Tuesday, local time. Wales and Northern Ireland — the other nations of the UK — are already in lockdown.
The UK is back in crisis mode as new daily Covid-19 cases soared above 50,000 cases for nearly a week, and hospitalizations exceed April’s peak.
According to Johnson, there were 30% more Covid-19 patients in hospitals in England on Monday than a week earlier. The health ministry has said the country would move to the highest Covid-19 alert level, reflecting concern that the rising number of hospitalizations could overwhelm country’s National Health Service (NHS) in coming weeks.
“Many parts of the health systems in the four nations are already under immense pressure. There are currently very high rates of community transmission, with substantial numbers of COVID patients in hospitals and in intensive care,” UK Chief Medical Officers said in a statement on Monday.
“We are not confident that the NHS can handle a further sustained rise in cases and without further action there is a material risk of the NHS in several areas being overwhelmed over the next 21 days,” UK Chief Medical Officers said, adding that the new variant, believed to have originated in the UK, has led to rising cases “almost everywhere.”
Vaccine hopes
The UK government is pinning its hopes for a route out of this disaster through its Covid-19 vaccination program, which began last month. Yet the country is long way from vaccinating the millions in the top priority groups mentioned by Johnson, including people “over the age of 70, all frontline health workers and everyone who is clinically vulnerable.”
Johnson suggests those groups are expected to have been offered their first doses by mid-February. But since the beginning of December, when the UK became the first in the world to administer the clinically approved Pfizer/BionTech vaccaine, more than 1 million people have received the immunization, according to a government press release.
On Monday, the first doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine were administered in the UK. “The vaccine means everything to me, to my mind it is the only way to get back to normal life,” Brian William Pinker, 82, said after receiving the first shot.
But optimism over the rollout of that vaccine — described as a “real pivotal moment” by UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock — was drowned out by the announcement of the new lockdown measures.
“Thanks to the miracle of science, not only is the end in sight, but we know exactly how we will get there. But for now we must, I am afraid, stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives,” Johnson said as he concluded his speech on Monday.