World

South Africa’s scandal-engulfed President Cyril Ramaphosa will not face an impeachment inquiry after easily surviving Tuesday a vote in parliament that could have initiated proceedings to remove him from office.

His ruling African National Congress (ANC) party defeated the motion by 214 votes to 148, with two abstentions through open voting.

Lawmakers voted after debating the findings of an independent panel which said Ramaphosa may be guilty of serious violations and misconduct over allegations he concealed a huge cash theft at his farm.

The vote prevented a procedure that some feared could have politically destabilised Africa’s most industrialised country.

In a terse response, his office said it had noted the National Assembly’s decision. “President Ramaphosa consistently stated his commitment to due process,” his spokesman said in a text message to AFP.

Ramaphosa — championed as a graft-busting saviour after corruption-stained predecessor Jacob Zuma — survived thanks to the support of a majority of ANC MPs.

The 70-year-old president had last week secured the backing of the ANC, which holds 230 of the National Assembly’s 400 seats, after mounting a legal bid to have the damning report annulled. Some MPs were absent.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola trashed the report saying “there is not sufficient evidence to impeach the president”.

– ‘Constitutional delinquent’ –

Ramaphosa’s escape comes just days ahead of a crucial ANC meeting to elect the new leadership.

Although the ANC, which has governed since the end of apartheid, has shot down any attempt to force Ramaphosa from office, he is not yet out of the woods.

His “leadership will be tested again at the party’s national conference”, Aleix Montana, analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note. 

He will likely be re-elected as leader because “there is no viable alternative candidate in the ANC,” said Montana.

That will position him for a second term as head of state, if the ANC wins the 2024 national election.

The ANC’s decision to back Ramaphosa upset some in the divided party.

A few ANC lawmakers, including Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma — Ramaphosa’s rival, a cabinet minister and Zuma’s ex-wife — defied the party command.

“As a disciplined member of the ANC, I vote yes,” she said drawing cheers and loud applause from some opposition MPs. 

She walked out of parliament saying that if Ramaphosa wants to fire her, “it’s his democratic right. I won’t hold it against him”.

Ramaphosa’s graft-tainted predecessor Zuma survived several no-confidence motions during his tenure before his own party forced him to resign in 2018.

Opposition parties presented a largely united front on the scandal.

“Today South Africans were left in no doubt that the presidency of… Ramaphosa is no different to the presidency of… Zuma,” said John Steenhuisen, leader of the largest opposition Democratic Alliance, accusing both of weakening parliament “to evade scrutiny and the law”.

Julius Malema, the fiery leader of the second largest opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party, expressed “deepest disappointment” in Ramaphosa who was once a “celebrated… architect” of South Africa’s constitution. 

He said Ramaphosa was now “peeing” on that document, calling him a “constitutional delinquent”.

The ANC vote defended “corruption”, said the EFF.

– Sudanese element –

Ramaphosa was at his home during the vote, said his spokesman.

The president, who was a wealthy businessman before entering politics, found himself in hot water in June when a controversial ex-spy boss filed a complaint against him to the police.

Arthur Fraser alleged Ramaphosa had concealed the theft of several million dollars from his farm in 2020.

He accused the president of having the burglars kidnapped and bribed into silence instead of reporting the matter to the authorities. 

Ramaphosa has not been charged with any crime and has denied wrongdoing.

The findings of the three-person special probe, issued last week, revealed details that have left South Africa agog.

Ramaphosa acknowledged the theft of $580,000 in cash that was stashed under sofa cushions at his farm — a safer place, his employees said, than the office safe.

He said the money was payment for buffaloes bought by a Sudanese businessman, who recently confirmed the transaction in interviews with British media.

French judges on Tuesday ordered prison terms for eight suspects charged in the harrowing 2016 terror attack in Nice, where a suspected Islamist attacker rammed his truck into a night-time crowd celebrating the July 14 national holiday.

Two men were sentenced to 18 years for helping Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian, prepare the attack that killed 86 people and injured over 450 during a four-minute rampage on a seafront embankment in the southern city before being shot dead by police.

Judges determined that Mohamed Ghraieb and Chokri Chafroud had to have known about the attacker’s turn to Islamist radicalism and his potential to carry out a terror attack, based on records of phone calls and text messages among the three in the days ahead of the massacre. 

Ghraieb, a 47-year-old from the same Tunisian town as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, and Chafroud, a 43-year-old Tunisian, are also accused of helping to rent the delivery truck. They denied the charges.

“The court is strongly convinced that the author of the attack… was associated as much with Mohamed Ghraieb as with Chokri Chafroud in his determination and in carrying out his criminal act,” presiding judge Laurent Raviot said.

Ramzi Arefa, 28 — who admitted to selling Lahouaiej-Bouhlel the semi-automatic pistol he fired at police, without hitting anyone — was handed a 12-year term.

But he was not accused of criminal association with a terrorist or of being aware of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel’s potential for launching an attack.

The Islamic State group later claimed him as one of its followers, though Raviot confirmed that investigators had not found any concrete links between the attacker and the jihadists who at the time controlled swaths of Iraq and Syria.

The five other suspects, a Tunisian and four Albanians, were sentenced to prison terms of two to eight years on charges of weapons trafficking or criminal conspiracy, but without any terrorism link.

Brahim Tritrou was the only suspect tried in absentia after fleeing judicial supervision to Tunisia, where he is now believed to be under arrest.

– Night of horror –

Some 30,000 people had gathered on the Nice seafront to watch a fireworks display celebrating France’s annual Bastille Day holiday on July 14 when Lahouaiej-Bouhlel unleashed his rampage.

According to French and Tunisian press reports, his body was repatriated to Tunisia in 2017 and buried in his hometown of M’saken, south of Tunis. This has never been confirmed by the Tunisian authorities.

France has been buffeted by a wave of Islamist terror attacks since the killings at the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015, often by “lone wolf” attackers acting in the name of IS or other jihadist groups.

In October, a Paris appeals court upheld the life sentence of Ali Riza Polat, accused of helping to find the weapons for the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

The Nice trial took place at the historic Palais de Justice in Paris, in the same purpose-built courtroom that hosted the hearings over the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

A special venue was also set up in Nice to allow victims to follow proceedings via a live broadcast.

For many of the victims, the sentences sought by prosecutors failed to match the scope of the suffering. 

During the trial, many of the survivors gasped in horror when prosecutors showed grisly video footage, never seen publicly, of the vehicle as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel swerved through the crowd, trying to mow down as many people as possible.

Laurence Bray, one of the attack victims who attended the sentencing, said she was “very happy” that Ghraieb and Chafroud were sentenced to 18 years, more than the 15 years prosecutors had requested.

“But then again, for everyone who lost a loved one, 18 years is nothing,” she told AFP.

Former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, who was removed from office and arrested last week on charges of rebellion and conspiracy, insisted Tuesday he would “never give up” his cause.

Castillo also called on police and the military to “stop killing” protesters who continue to demand his release and reinstatement, after violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators left seven people dead in recent days.

Castillo was arrested last Wednesday after he attempted to dissolve congress and rule by decree just hours before the legislature was due to hold a third impeachment vote against him. Castillo and his family were being investigated for alleged corruption.

Congress went ahead with its vote and overwhelmingly decided to impeach him for “moral incapacity.”

He was provisionally detained for seven days as prosecutors accused him of rebellion and conspiracy.

Within a matter of hours his vice-president Dina Boluarte, a former prosecutor, was sworn in as Castillo’s successor.

“I will never give up and abandon this popular cause that brought me here,” the leftist Castillo said during a court hearing that began soon after 9:00 am (1400 GMT).

“From here I would like to urge the armed forces and national police to lay down their arms and stop killing these people thirsty for justice.

He said his arrest was unjust and arbitrary.

“I am not a thief, a rapist, corrupt or a thug,” he added during the virtual hearing into his appeal against provisional detention.

He was interrupted by the judge who asked him to keep to legal arguments.

The judge then suspended the hearing and is due to make a ruling at 3:30 pm.

– Seven dead –

Castillo’s supporters began protesting almost immediately after his arrest, with matters escalating on Sunday when two people were killed in clashes between demonstrators and the security forces.

Another five people died on Monday in more violent clashes.

His supporters are demanding that Castillo be freed, that Boluarte resign and parliament be dissolved.

Six of the seven dead have been in Apurimac region, where Boluarte was born.

The other death happened in Peru’s second largest city Arequipa as police cleared hundreds of protesters from the runway at the city’s airport where they had set up barricades of burning tires, logs and rocks.

Boluarte tried to calm tensions on Sunday by vowing to bring forward elections from 2026 to 2024 and declaring a state of emergency in flashpoint areas.

On Monday, the government fired the 26 regional prefects who had been appointed by Castillo, accusing them of “inciting protests.”

The country’s right-leaning Congress convened an emergency session on Sunday afternoon to discuss the crisis, but it had to be suspended after fighting broke out.

Mexico’s leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave Castillo his backing on Tuesday, insisting his country still recognizes him as president.

A day earlier, the leftist governments of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia released a joint statement saying Castillo had been “the victim of antidemocratic harassment” since his election.

– Machu Picchu train suspended –

Protests continued on Tuesday with roadblocks in 13 of the country’s 24 regions, according to police.

The worst hit areas are in the north and the south, including the region of Cusco, a hotspot for tourism in the country as it is home to the Machu Picchu Inca citadel, and Arequipa.

Indigenous and agrarian organizations have also called an indefinite strike to begin on Tuesday.

That forced the train service between the city of Cusco and Machu Picchu to be suspended, the rail operator said.

Cusco airport was also shut overnight due to attempts by protesters to get inside.

The situation in Lima was calm on Tuesday morning following clashes on Monday night in which police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters trying to reach the congress building.

With his background as a rural teacher and union leader, and with little contact with the nation’s elites, Castillo has always drawn his strongest support from Andean regions, while struggling to find backing in coastal Lima.

Peru is now on its sixth president since 2016.

Castillo’s 17-month rule was overshadowed by six investigations against him and his family, mass protests demanding his removal, and a power struggle with the opposition-backed Congress.

US researchers announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough on Tuesday, hailing a “landmark achievement” in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on fossil fuels.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) said it had used the world’s largest laser to create, for the first time, a fusion reaction that replicated the process that powers the sun and generated more energy than it took to produce -– a goal pursued by scientists for decades.

Nuclear fusion has been touted by its supporters as a clean, abundant and safe source of energy that could eventually allow humanity to break its dependence on coal, crude oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons driving a global climate crisis.

The US Department of Energy described the achievement of fusion ignition as a “major scientific breakthrough” that will lead to “advancements in national defense and the future of clean power.”

However, there is still a long way to go before fusion is viable on an industrial scale, providing power to homes and businesses.

“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” Kim Budil, the LLNL director, said at a press conference.

“A few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant,” she said.

The LLNL, which is based in California, said a team at its National Ignition Facility had achieved what is known as “net energy gain” in an experiment this month, producing more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.

“They shot a bunch of lasers at a pellet of fuel and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers,” explained White House science advisor Arati Prabhakar.

– More developments needed –

For the experiment, researchers at LLNL used 192 ultra-powerful lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy to a tiny capsule smaller than a pea containing isotopes of hydrogen.

It produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output.

While the result was a net energy gain, 300 megajoules of energy was needed from the electrical grid to power the lasers.

“Our calculations suggest that it’s possible with a laser system at scale to achieve hundreds of megajoules of yield,” Budil said.

“So there is a pathway to a target that produces enough yield, but we’re very distant from that right now.”

Nuclear power plants around the world currently use fission — the splitting of a heavy atom’s nucleus — to produce energy.

Fusion on the other hand combines two light hydrogen atoms to form one heavier helium atom, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.

That’s the process that occurs inside stars, including our sun.

On Earth, fusion reactions can be provoked by heating hydrogen to extreme temperatures inside specialized devices.

Like fission, fusion is carbon-free during operation, but has many more advantages: it poses no risk of nuclear disaster and produces much less radioactive waste.

Other nuclear fusion projects are also in development around the world, including the major international project known as ITER, which is currently under construction in France.

Instead of lasers, ITER will use a technique known as magnetic confinement, containing a swirling mass of fusing hydrogen plasma within a massive donut-shaped chamber.

US prosecutors slapped disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried with multiple criminal charges on Tuesday for massive fraud as he built his FTX crypto empire.

The charge sheet landed as Bankman-Fried appeared in a Bahamas court and indicated that he would fight an extradition request by the United States and asked to be released on bail pending a hearing.

The founder of the FTX platform, who was arrested in the Bahamas Monday at the request of the United States, is facing a raft of accusations, including from US market regulators who say that the investor knowingly built a fraudulent house of cards.

In a Nassau courtroom, attended by US embassy officials and Bankman-Fried’s parents, Bahamian prosecutors argued that the suspect was a flight risk and should be denied bail pending an extradition hearing, the New York Times reported.

The criminal charges, made by federal prosecutors in New York, posed the greatest threat to Bankman-Fried who risks a long jail sentence given the billions of dollars involved.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options,” his lawyer Mark Cohen said in a statement.

– ‘Massive fraud’ –

In their indictment, US prosecutors said Bankman Fried also carried out money laundering, violated campaign finance laws and committed wire fraud since the start of his company in 2019.

Bankman-Fried “was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire,” prosecutors said.

The legal hammer fell after the 30-year-old spent weeks defying legal advice and made multiple media appearances defending his actions, usually by video link from the Bahamas, where his company is headquartered.

Bankman-Fried had embodied the emergence of cryptocurrency as an above-board investment rather than a dodgy get-rich-quick scheme for high-risk investors.

His FTX platform was plugged by celebrities in advertising campaigns and he became a regular presence in Washington, where he donated tens of millions of dollars in political contributions, mainly to the Democratic Party.

But after reaching a valuation of $32 billion, FTX’s implosion was swift following a November 2 media report on ties between FTX and Alameda, a trading company also controlled by Bankman-Fried.

The report exposed that Alameda’s balance sheet was heavily built on the FTT currency — a token created by FTX with no independent value — and exposed Bankman-Fried’s companies as being dangerously interlinked.

– ‘Grossly inexperienced’ –

Reeling from customer withdrawals and short some $8 billion, FTX and around 100 related entities filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11, inviting scrutiny from regulators, prosecutors and furious clients. 

“If convicted he could be facing the rest of his life in prison, given the dollar amount of the fraud,” Jacob S. Frenkel, a former federal criminal prosecutor at Dickinson Wright, told AFP.

“We would not see an indictment if prosecutors were not absolutely convinced that they will win a conviction.”

In his media interviews, Bankman-Fried has admitted to mistakes, but has denied intent to defraud his customers.

FTX CEO John Ray, who came to the company after the debacle, told Congress on Tuesday that the problems arose because control was “in the hands of a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals.”

“Never in my career have I seen such an utter failure of corporate controls at every level of an organization, from the lack of financial statements to a complete failure of any internal controls or governance whatsoever,” Ray said.

The fall of FTX has caused major doubts about the long term viability of cryptocurrency and heaped stress on other platforms and entities that rode the success of Bitcoin and other currencies.