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President Joe Biden held the floor for an impromptu Q&A session Friday afternoon during the White House press briefing, where he claimed Vice President Kamala Harris is ‘in constant contact.’ His comments may not come across as music to the Harris campaign’s ears.

In the president’s surprise appearance, he remarked on the port strike, the latest jobs numbers, and briefly on Hurricane Helene. No reporters asked about the administration’s response to the storm, but one asked Biden to assess whether Harris has been deeply involved in policy.

‘Well, she’s, I’m in constant contact with her. She’s aware we all, we’re singing from the same song sheet. We, she helped pass all the laws that are being employed,’ said Biden.

‘Now, she was a major player in everything we’ve done, including passage of legislation which we were told we could never pass. And so she’s been, and her, her staff is interlocked with mine in terms of all the things we’re doing,’ Biden continued.

The president strongly linked Vice President Harris to the Biden administration’s record over the past 3 ½ years, despite the Harris campaign’s attempts to distance her from everything from ‘Bidenomics’ to inflation to the border crisis, since Biden announced he was ending his reelection campaign, and Harris assumed the mantle of nominee.

Harris recently changed the Biden fiscal year 2025 plan from a capital gains tax rate of 39.6% on a salary of $1M or more to her own 28%, for example. As illegal migration across the border surged to historic levels, Harris has also insisted she was never in charge of Biden’s border policy, despite Biden personally handing her the reins at the White House in March 2021.

Axios reported that Harris would begin creating some daylight between herself and Biden in August in order to defeat Trump, as inflation raged, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East heated up, the border crisis continued, crime lingered as a concern, and other factors, including Harris’ own weak approval rating, weighed her campaign down. Other outlets and pundits on the left soon followed suit.

But Biden has reportedly bristled about his vice president distancing herself from him behind the scenes. He has also hinted that he believes he could have won the election had he not dropped out.

During an appearance on The View last week, Biden said, ‘I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance to my running again. The fact of the matter is, my polling was always in range of beating [Trump].’ Biden even joked about jumping back into the race during Friday’s surprise appearance at the White House.

He also began his first White House briefing appearance of his presidency at the same Harris was taking the stage at a campaign event, raising questions over whether it was a communications issue between him and the campaign, or he was trying to upstage her.

Biden sparked questions on the topic before, on the anniversary of September 11, by wearing a Trump hat momentarily. The White House referred it to as a ‘unity gesture’ – after Biden spent years casting Trump as a ‘threat to democracy.’

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Politics

Expert warns UN’s role in AI regulation could lead to safety overreach

The United Nations (U.N.) advisory body on artificial intelligence (AI) last week issued seven recommendations to address AI-related risks, but an expert told Fox News Digital the points do not cover critical areas of concern.

‘They didn’t really say much about the unique role of AI in different parts of the world, and I think they needed to be a little more aware that different economic structures and different regulatory structures that already exist are going to cause different outcomes,’ Phil Siegel, co-founder of the Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation (CAPTRS), said.

‘I think that they could have done a better job of — instead of just trying to go to the lowest common denominator — being a little more specific around what does a state like the United States, what is unique there?’ Siegel said. ‘How does what we do in the United States impact others, and what should we be looking at specifically for us?

‘Same thing with Europe. They have much more strict privacy needs or rules in Europe,’ he noted. ‘What does that mean? I think it would have gained them a little bit of credibility to be a little more specific around the differences that our environments around the world cause for AI.’

The U.N. Secretary-General’s High-level Advisory Body on AI published its suggested guidelines Sept. 19, which aimed to cover ‘global AI governance gaps’ among its 193 member states.

The body suggested establishing an International Scientific Panel on AI, creating a policy dialogue on AI governance, creating a global AI capacity development network, establishing a global AI fund, fostering of an AI data framework and forming an AI office in the U.N. Secretariat.

These measures, Siegel said, seem to be an effort by the U.N. to establish ‘a little bit more than a seat at the table, maybe a better seat at the table in some other areas.’

‘If you want to take it at face value, I think what they’re doing is saying some of these recommendations that different member states have come up with have been good, especially in the European Union, since they match a lot of those,’ Siegel noted.

‘I think … it sets the bar in the right direction or the pointer in the right direction that people need to start paying attention to these things and letting it get off the rails, but I think some of it is just it’s not really doable.’

Multiple entities have pursued global-level coordination on AI policy as nations seek to maintain an advantage while preventing rivals from developing into pacing challenges. While trying to develop AI for every possible use, they also hold safety summits to try and ‘align’ policy, such as the upcoming U.S.-led summit in California in November.

Siegel acknowledged the U.N. is likely to be one of the better options to help coordinate such efforts as an already-existing global forum — even as countries try to set up their own safety institutes to coordinate safety guidelines between nations. But he remained concerned about U.N. overreach.

‘They probably should be coordinated through the U.N., but not with rules and kind of hard and fast things that the member states have to do, but a way of implementing best practices,’ Siegel suggested.

‘I think there’s a little bit of a trust issue with the United Nations given they have tried to, as I said, gain a little bit more than a seat at the table in some other areas and gotten slapped back. On the other hand, you know, it already exists.

‘It is something that the vast majority of countries around the world are members, so it would seem to me to be the logical coordinating agency, but not necessarily for convening or measurements and benchmarks.’

Siegel said the U.S. and Europe have already made ‘some pretty good strides’ on creating long-term safety regulations, and Asian nations have ‘done a good job on their own and need to be brought into these discussions.’

‘I just don’t know if the U.N. is the right place to convene to make that happen, or is it better for them to wait for these things to happen and say, ‘We’re going to help track and be there to help’ rather than trying to make them happen,’ Siegel said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Politics

‘Tightest race since 2000’: Harris-Trump showdown hits final stretch until Election Day

Saturday marks one month to go until Election Day on November 5.

As the presidential campaign enters the home stretch, it remains a margin-of-error race nationally and in the seven key battleground states likely to determine the winner of the election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.

Both national party chairs are confident of their chances.

‘We’re playing offense right now,’ Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this week. ‘We feel very, very good about the map.’

His counterpart, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison told reporters on Friday that ‘the enthusiasm is palatable in our party.’

But Harrison emphasized that ‘we know that this election will come down to the margins, and we’re not taking any vote for granted.’

Since replacing President Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket in mid-July, Harris has enjoyed a wave of momentum and enjoyed a surge in fundraising. In the all-important cash dash, Harris and the DNC appear to hold a large advantage over Trump and the RNC.

And that’s helped bolster what was already a very impressive ground game organizational advantage the Democrats held over the Republicans.

‘We started laying the foundation well before 2024 by investing in our ground game,’ Harrison highlighted. ‘We have been on the ground since the earliest days of this campaign getting our message out.’

The DNC chair touted that there are ‘more than 312 coordinated offices across the battleground states,’ with ‘over 2,000 coordinated staff…doing the hard work on the ground.’

But Whatley wasn’t phased.

‘The Democrats have a ton of money. The Democrats always have a ton of money,’ Whatley said, noting that Trump was outraised in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.

The RNC chair emphasized that ‘we have the resources we need to get our message out to our voters and to every voter. I feel very, very comfortable about the campaign plan.’

And while the Harris campaign and allied groups have outspent Trump and his aligned groups in the ad wars, Whatley pointed to the former president’s ability to capture free media.

‘Donald Trump is out there talking every single day to the voters in a way that only he can. He can generate news. He can go out there and generate social media hits. He can communicate directly with the American voters like no other politician of our generation, so it’s a huge advantage for us,’ he said.

Veteran Democratic pollster Chris Anderson, who conducted the Fox News Poll along with longtime Republican pollster Daron Shaw, said with four weeks to go, ‘my expectations of plausible outcomes range from a narrow Electoral College victory for Trump to a modestly more comfortable victory for Harris.’

But while Harris holds a slight two-point edge in an average of the national surveys, Shaw noted that ‘the issue profile of this election continues to favor Trump.’

Veteran political scientist and New England College president Wayne Lesperance said that ‘this presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the closest in history, with the results likely to be slow-coming.’

And longtime Republican consultant Matt Gorman, a veteran of numerous GOP presidential campaigns, highlighted that ‘we’re slated for the tightest race since 2000.’

‘There are no more debates. There’s going to be a vacuum of news,’ he said. ‘It’s integral the Trump campaign fill that vacuum with a message that puts Harris on the defensive.’

Trump, like Biden, is a well-known commodity.

But Harris, even after being in the spotlight for nearly two months, is still less well-defined.

‘The more voters get to know Vice President Harris, the more they like her,’ Democratic strategist and communicator Chris Moyer argued.

‘It’s imperative that she continues to get in front of swing state voters, and she could afford to do more in the final weeks,’ he offered. ‘She should barnstorm the key states, filling up her schedule with rallies and local interviews and off-the-record stops that produce shareable clips that bounce around social media. They’ve run a nearly perfect race to this point, but many voters still want to know more about who she is, what she believes, and what she will do as president.’

With one month to go, there’s always the possibility of an October surprise that could rock the White House race.

The dockworkers strike earlier this week – which closed major ports – could have wreaked havoc on the nation’s supply chain. It could have turned into an October surprise, but the strike was suspended after just two days.

Hurricane Helene, which tore a path of destruction through the southeast, also made an impact on the presidential contest – and there were memories of how Superstorm Sandy rocked the 2012 White House race between then-President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

And the strife in the Middle East – between Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah, also threatens to upend the election.

It’s important to note that while Election Day is a month away, in over two-dozen states, early in-person voting, absentee balloting, and voting by mail, are already underway.

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Business

How a tiny town hit by Helene could upend the global semiconductor chip industry

Virtually all of the world’s supply of a mineral that is critical to semiconductor production comes from one tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that has been devastated by Hurricane Helene.

Spruce Pine, North Carolina has no running water or electricity, more than a week after Helene ripped through the town of 2,200. Roads and railways in and out of the area are severely damaged, according to local officials.

Mines in Spruce Pine produce the world’s purest form of quartz, which plays a central role in chip manufacturing.

Now, the town’s exceedingly valuable supply of high-purity quartz is at risk, threatening to cripple the $600 billion global semiconductor industry.

The natural disaster unfolding in Spruce Pine also highlights the continued instability of global supply chains, more than four years after Covid-19 drove home to Americans how dependent they had become on imported goods.

Two companies, Sibelco and The Quartz Corp., extract the high-purity quartz in Spruce Pine, refine it and export it to manufacturing facilities based primarily in China and other parts of Asia.

Much of the refined, high-purity quartz is then used to create a vessel called a crucible, which holds silicon as it is melted and transformed into the wafers on which semiconductors are made.

But mining, refining and shipping are all on hold, for now.

Both Sibelco and the Quartz Corp. were forced to halt operations on Sept. 26 due to the storm, which dumped more than two feet of rain on Spruce Pine, according to the National Weather Service.

The companies say there is no timeline right now as to when they expect to resume normal operations.

“The Spruce Pine community has been hit particularly hard,” Sibelco said in a statement on Sept. 30. “We have temporarily halted operations at the Spruce Pine facilities in response to these challenges.”

The Quartz Corp. said in an Oct. 1 statement that the company has “no visibility” as to when their operations will be able to resume.

For the semiconductor industry, the challenges that any long-term disruption to the Spruce Pine mines would present cannot be overstated, experts say.

“This is the only plant in the world right now that serves the semiconductor industry in its entirety,” said TECHCET CEO Lita Shon-Roy, who has studied the quartz supply chain for more than two decades. “If something were to happen to these mines, it can put the entire industry on its ear, period. There’s no other capability.”

What happens next, experts say, is a two-part question. First, operators need to determine whether there has been any damage to the quartz mines themselves, or to the equipment the companies use to extract or refine the mineral.

If mining operations can start up again, the secondary question is how either company will transport refined quartz to export markets, given the state of some of the infrastructure in western North Carolina.

TECHCET estimates it could be four to six weeks before the companies’ operations are running at full throttle again. But that forecast, Shon-Roy says, is dependent on roads opening back up, given that both companies rely primarily on trucking to move their minerals.

Early indications, however, are that transit infrastructure will require extensive rebuilding.

“Roads are gone,” said Spencer Bost, the executive director of Downtown Spruce Pine, a nonprofit that partners with the city. In some areas, he said, “The roads just don’t exist anymore.”

When it comes to electricity, said Bost, “it’s not like power lines are down — telephone poles are gone.”

Yet there are still two glimmers of hope for the semiconductor industry.

The first is that there is likely some inventory of high-purity quartz stockpiled for the components it helps create. This could give the industry a cushion of two or three months, while Spruce Pine recovers from Helene, Shon-Roy said.

As the semiconductor industry emerges from its own downturn, demand has been fairly soft, said Shon-Roy. Additionally, ever since the pandemic most companies have been keeping larger inventories in stock.

“That will help cushion the delay in getting these plants restarted,” Shon-Roy said.

The other upside: The crucibles that quartz is used to create have a shelf life of about 300 to 400 hours — or roughly two weeks — before they need to be replaced, said Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University who studies solar energy commodity chains.

As a result, there could be some lag before chip manufacturers are hurting for more.

“But once they start having to replace the crucibles, that’s where you will run into the potential for disruption,” Mulvaney said.

The longer it takes for Spruce Pine’s mining industry to get back to work, the bigger the impact will be.

“A month’s delay is not bad,” said Shon-Roy. “Two months is getting difficult. Three months becomes a real problem.”

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Business

Dockworkers on East and Gulf Coast to return to work after reaching agreement on wages

Thousands of dockworkers on the East Coast and Gulf Coast will return to work after reaching a tentative agreement on wages, ending one of the biggest work stoppages in decades.

In a joint statement, the United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, and the International Longshoreman’s Association said the two sides have an agreement to extend their current labor contract through Jan. 15 and continue to negotiate.

‘The International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, Ltd. have reached a tentative agreement on wages,’ the union and the alliance said.

‘Effective immediately, all current job actions will cease and all work covered by the Master Contract will resume,’ the statement said.

The terms of the tentative wage agreement were not disclosed in the joint statement.

The International Longshoremen’s Association, known as the ILA, argued that big global cargo carriers have raked in huge profits since pandemic-era supply-chain snags drove up freight rates, and that workers haven’t sufficiently shared in those gains.

The United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, represents major ocean freight and port operators.

The union also sought limits on automation at ports. The joint statement only mentions wages.

The strike began at midnight Monday, going into Tuesday. The ILA strike that shut down ports is its first since 1977. That one lasted 44 days.

The work stoppage involved ports from Maine to Texas. The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland were among those calling for a swift resolution to the labor dispute.

President Joe Biden on Thursday praised both sides for finding a way to get a tentative deal done so that ports can reopen and talks can continue.

‘Today’s tentative agreement on a record wage and an extension of the collective bargaining process represents critical progress towards a strong contract,’ Biden said.

The tentative wage agreement and resumption of the contract appears to end fears of higher prices for consumers and supply-chain issues had the stoppage dragged on. It also temporarily quiets a contentious labor issue with around a month left to go in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Biden had publicly urged USMX to make what he called a fair offer, and he said the alliance represents a group of foreign-owned carriers.

“Now is not the time for ocean carriers to refuse to negotiate a fair wage for these essential workers while raking in record profits,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday.

On Wednesday, with no deal in place, Biden increased the pressure by having White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients convene a meeting with CEOs of foreign carriers for Thursday, said sources familiar with the thinking of Biden and the White House.

National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard was able to get global shippers to increase their offer, although still not quite enough, the sources said.

Zients, Brainard, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su had a 5:30 a.m. call on Thursday with the shippers on Thursday, who by midday had agreed to move forward with the wage increases to reopen ports, the sources said.

The union and USMX will still need to come to terms on the question of automation, which has emerged as a more existential issue. Ports around the world have embraced technology that can make shipping faster, cheaper and safer, with U.S. ports now regularly lagging behind international ports in efficiency.

A Government Accountability Office report from this year found that U.S. ports had embraced some automation, but that labor opposition as well as cost were hindering the adoption of automation technology.

As for any lingering effects from the brief work stoppage, the number of ships waiting to dock has already started to decline, and no major disruptions are expected to be felt by consumers. Everstream Analytics, a supply chain risk management company, told NBC News that it will take about three weeks to clear the backlog.

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World News

Georgian parliament speaker signs law curbing LGBT rights

Georgian parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili said in a Facebook post on Thursday that he had signed into law a “family values” bill curbing LGBT rights, just weeks before a high-stakes parliamentary election.

Lawmakers from the ruling Georgian Dream party last month approved the bill, which bans gender transitions and could outlaw pride marches and displays of the LGBT rainbow flag. The party says the law is necessary to protect Georgia’s Orthodox Christian church from outsiders.

President Salome Zourabichvili, a critic of the ruling party, had refused to sign the bill into law. Georgian Dream and its allies in parliament had enough seats to overcome her opposition.

Georgian LGBT activists say that the law is an attempt by Georgian Dream to boost support among conservative voters ahead of the Oct. 26 election, in which the party is seeking an unprecedented fourth term in power.

Some Western countries have criticized the bill, casting it as part of what they say is a turn towards authoritarianism and alignment with Russia in country that had mainly leaned towards the West since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Opinion polls show that Georgian Dream remains the country’s most popular single party against a divided opposition, though it has lost ground since 2020, when it won almost 50% of the vote and a narrow majority in parliament.

Georgian Dream, founded by the country’s richest man, has also enacted a law requiring groups that receive funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, which its opponents say is modelled on legislation used to criminalize dissent in Russia.

Relations with Moscow have overshadowed politics for decades in Georgia, which has been a candidate to join NATO and the EU.

Moscow supports separatists in two ethnic regions who broke away from Tbilisi’s rule in wars in the 1990s, and Russian forces defeated Georgia in a brief war in 2008. Georgian Dream argues that its opponents would bring a return to war, and says it would pursue more stable relations with Russia.

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World News

Hezbollah leader agreed to temporary ceasefire days before assassination, says Lebanese foreign minister

The temporary ceasefire was called for by US President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and other allies during last week’s UN General Assembly.

“He [Nasrallah] agreed, he agreed,” Habib told Christiane Amanpour in an interview aired on Wednesday.

“We agreed completely. Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire but consulting with Hezbollah. The [Lebanese House] Speaker Mr. Nabih Berri consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French what happened. And they told us that Mr. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu also agreed on the statement that was issued by both presidents [Biden and Macron.]”

White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was then set to go to Lebanon to negotiate the ceasefire, Habib continued.

“They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed on this and so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that and you know what happened since then,” the foreign minister added.

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.

A day earlier, a joint statement issued by the United States, France, Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Qatar called for a 21-day ceasefire, “to give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further escalations across the border.”

A Western source familiar with the negotiations also said Hezbollah had agreed to the temporary truce shortly before the US released the proposal last week. The source didn’t say whether the decision had come directly from Nasrallah, but said that for the movement to agree, they would have needed his approval. A second source familiar with the talks agreed that the US was aware that Hezbollah was agreeing to the ceasefire.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller did not rule out that it had happened, but also said the US was not aware.

“We were having a number of diplomatic engagements to talk about the proposals that we were going to put forward. I think all of the parties were well aware of the proposals that we were going to put forward, but at no time in those conversations did we get a message that Hezbollah had agreed or was going to agree to it,” Miller said.

Hezbollah never officially announced their position publicly. It appeared Hezbollah was waiting to see what Israel would do once the US, France and the other allies put out the statement on Wednesday night announcing the ceasefire.

But hours later, Prime Minister Benjajmin Netanyahu said Israel would “continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might.” Israeli officials tried to explain what happened as an “honest misunderstanding,” saying they thought the proposal “was the start of a process that could ultimately lead to a ceasefire.”

The US official said that the administration retreated from pushing last week’s ceasefire plan once they learned Israel may try to take out Nasrallah.

In response to a question on the United States’ diminishing influence in the region, Habib said Washington was “always important in this regard.”

“I don’t think we have an alternative. We need the United States’ help. Whether we get it or not, we’re not sure yet, but [the] United States is very important, vital for the ceasefire to happen,” said Habib.

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World News

A Cambodian maid was arrested and deported by Malaysia for criticizing Cambodian leaders on social media

A Cambodian woman who worked as a maid in Malaysia has been deported to her homeland for comments she posted on social media criticizing Cambodian government leaders, in the latest example of a Southeast Asian government helping another arrest a dissident.

A Cambodia prison official and an opposition activist group said Thursday that Nuon Toeun, 36, who had worked in Malaysia for several years, was arrested last week by Malaysian authorities following a request from the Cambodian government.

Human rights groups have criticized several Southeast Asian governments for helping each other harass, detain and deport political dissidents in exile. New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the Thai government to stop forcing political dissidents to return to their authoritarian home countries, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China, where they might face torture, persecution or death.

Freedom House, a US-based organization that promotes democracy, says the practice of attacking or sending back exiled dissidents “is becoming a ‘normal’ phenomenon as more governments around the world use it to silence dissent.″

Nuth Sovana, a spokesperson for Cambodia’s prison department, said Nuon Toeun was detained at Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh upon her arrival in Cambodia on Tuesday. She was charged with incitement to commit a felony or cause social disorder and incitement to discriminate on the basis of race religion or nationality, he said. He couldn’t provide details of the offenses she was accused of committing.

If convicted on both charges, she could face up to five years in prison and a fine.

Malaysian police and immigration officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on her deportation.

Nuon Toeun is neither an opposition leader nor a well-known activist. However, Cambodia’s government has expressed concern recently about overseas critics rallying support among Cambodian expatriates.

Nuon Toeun’s arrest came shortly after a Cambodian investigative reporter, Mech Dara, known for exposing online scams and corruption, was charged with incitement to commit a felony for material he posted on social media.

Radio Free Asia, a US government-funded news service that reports extensively on Cambodia, said Nuon Toeun often used social media to criticize Cambodia’s leadership, including Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen, the former prime minister who is now the Senate president, over their handling of social issues.

Cambodia’s government under the governing Cambodia People’s Party has long been accused of silencing critics and political opponents.

Radio Free Asia said Nuon Toeun was a supporter of the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party, which was dissolved ahead of the 2018 general election as part of a crackdown on the opposition. The Cambodian People’s Party subsequently won every seat in the National Assembly.

A few days before her arrest, Nuon Toeun posted a video on Facebook in which she said she was “expressing rage on behalf of the people living inside Cambodia,” Radio Free Asia reported.

“If I have sinned because I (have cursed) this despicable guy, I am happy to accept the sin because he has mistreated my people so badly,” she said, in a reference to Hun Sen, Radio Free Asia reported.

The Khmer Movement for Democracy, a movement formed by opposition leaders in exile, condemned Nuon Toeun’s deportation from Malaysia. It said in a statement that she was working legally in Malaysia and had committed no crime except expressing her opinions.

It said her deportation without due process was a “blatant violation of international law and a grave assault on human rights.”

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World News

Massacre in Burkina Faso left 600 dead, double previous estimates, according to French security assessment

Editor’s note: This story contains a graphic image and descriptions of violence.

Up to 600 people were shot dead in a matter of hours by al Qaeda-linked militants in an August attack on a town in Burkina Faso, according to a French government security assessment that nearly doubles the death toll cited in earlier reports. The new figure would make the assault, in which civilians were shot dead as they dug trenches to defend the remote town of Barsalogho, one of the deadliest single attacks in Africa in recent decades.

Militants from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al Qaeda affiliate based in Mali and active in Burkina Faso, opened fire methodically as they swept into the outskirts of Barsalogho on motorcycles and shot down villagers, who lay helpless in the freshly upturned dirt of the trench, according to several videos of the August 24 attack posted by pro-JNIM accounts on social media. Many of the dead were women and children, and the footage is punctuated by the sound of automatic gunfire and screams of victims as they are shot while apparently trying to play dead.

The United Nations initially estimated the death toll was at least 200. JNIM said it had killed nearly 300 people but claimed it had targeted militia members affiliated with the army, rather than civilians, according to a translation by Site Intelligence Group cited by Reuters.

“Large-scale deadly attacks (at least a hundred deaths) against civilian populations or defense and security forces have been occurring for several weeks at a rate that seems unsustainable for the government,” the report says of Burkina Faso, “which no longer really has a military strategy to offer and whose propaganda discourse seems out of breath and ideas.”

On September 17, the capital of nearby Mali, Bamako, was rocked by another JNIM assault, which hit the airport, among other key buildings, and killed more than 70 people.

‘Defensive trenches’ became mass grave

The massacre at Barsalogho came as locals were ordered by the military to dig a vast trench network around the town to protect it from jihadists circulating nearby. The JNIM gunmen then attacked the defenses, mid-construction, falsely claiming the civilians were combatants because of their involvement, according to eyewitnesses.

“I started to crawl into the trench to escape,” he said. “But it seemed that the attackers were following the trenches. So, I crawled out and came across the first bloodied victim. There was actually blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until later in the afternoon, hiding.”

“There were few remaining men afterwards in the town. Seeing the bodies arrive on motorized carts from the massacre site was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen in my life. Neither women nor children had tears to shed. We were more than shocked. How can you cry if there are no tears to shed?”

“We the survivors are no longer normal. The problem is beyond us all. The massacre started in front of me. The very first shots were fired right in front of me. I was one of the people who picked up the bodies and buried them. I see my late friends when I’m asleep,” he said, adding that the initial reports of 300 dead were too low. “Anyone who denies it, should come and see me.”

The assault led to angry protests in which Burkina Faso’s junta leader, captain Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in the second of two successive military coups in 2022, was derided as “IB Captain Zero” for endorsing the construction of the trenches by civilians. The French report said their construction had been part of a plan by the Minister of Civil Service in which each settlement “must organize itself and have its own response plan to an attack.”

Burkina Faso’s 2022 coups came amid frustrations over the authorities’ inability to quash recurring jihadist violence, despite intensive French military assistance, which has claimed thousands of lives for almost a decade. But that violence has worsened under Traore, according to experts and human rights watchdogs.

Though successful at first, by 2014, France’s military operations in the region were met with growing anti-French sentiment. France broadened its counterterrorism presence but was unable to contain the ever-expanding armed groups who threatened civilians. As a result, local populations became wary of the former colonial power.

Traore has made only one public appearance since the massacre, and the assessment – penned in late August – questions his state of mind and fitness for office. “We see there all the powerlessness of the authorities to provide a serious and credible response to the terrorist threat,” the report reads.

Russian mercenaries on back foot as violence spreads

Meanwhile, Russian mercenaries who arrived in Burkina Faso almost a year ago have failed to bring calm to the country and are at least partially being pulled out to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine, the assessment adds. Increased security in the capital Ouagadougou around key buildings may be linked to the withdrawal of much of the 100-strong Wagner mercenary group’s “Bear” unit, charged with Traore’s personal protection, says the report. The mercenary group has been under new management since the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last year, but Wagner is still colloquially referred to by its old name in the Sahel.

The report suggests the unit was reassigned to fend off Ukraine’s invasion of the Russian border regions and may be replaced with less capable Russian servicemen.

Criticism of the army, voiced by relatives of the dead and survivors from Barsalogho, who maintain the military fled the assault, has been amplified by recent accusations of cannibalism by Burkina Faso soldiers, the report adds. It cites videos posted publicly on social media that appear to show soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Battalion 15 (BIR-15) eating parts of dead jihadists.

The report adds: “The general staff of the Burkina Faso armies published a press release on July 24, 2024, in which it ‘condemns these macabre acts’ and ‘reassures that measures will be taken to formally identify the origin of these images as well as their authors.’” It assesses the incident as another sign of discipline in the army deteriorating since the coup two years ago that put Traore in power and led to the French departure.

The French security assessment adds the violence in Burkina Faso has begun to spill over into at least one of its peaceful southern neighbors, citing an attack inside Togo from a Burkina Faso border town, Kompienga, on July 20, seizing a Togolese army camp, killing at least 12 soldiers and looting weapons. “Rumors indicate the creation of a new GSIM Wilaya for Togo,” the report adds, referring to a new al Qaeda affiliate for the country, “fueled by terrorists from the North.”

“Barsalogho is proof that Burkina Faso is teetering on the edge because the terrorists have such a hold on the country. Six hundred people have died, and that’s terrible, but what’s worse is that it’s as if it never happened, because the killers continue to roam free with no fear of retribution,” according to the assessment.

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World News

Billionaire who brought F1 to Singapore charged in landmark corruption probe

A Singapore court charged a property billionaire on Friday with obstructing justice and abetting offenses by a disgraced ex-transport minister jailed a day earlier in the city-state’s high-profile government graft case.

Ong Beng Seng, the 78-year-old owner of Hotel Properties Ltd and the rights holder to the Singapore Grand Prix Formula One race, is accused of giving high-value gifts to ex-minister S. Iswaran, who on Thursday became the first former cabinet member to be jailed in Singapore.

The case has been the subject of major intrigue in Singapore, a wealthy financial hub that offers ministers salaries of more than S$1 million dollars ($771,247) to deter graft and prides itself on its reputation for clean governance.

Iswaran was imprisoned for 12 months for obstructing justice and improperly receiving gifts as a public servant, with Ong a central part of the prosecution’s case.

Ong has so far issued no comment on the accusations. Channel NewsAsia said he entered no plea on Friday and did not indicate how he would plead.

Ong’s firm, Singapore-listed Hotel Properties, requested a trading halt early on Friday following Thursday’s announcement that he would be charged.

During Iswaran’s trial, prosecutors said the ex-minister received gifts worth more than $300,000, including tickets to English Premier League soccer matches, the F1 Grand Prix, London musicals and a ride on a private jet to Doha.

Ong was charged with one count of abetting Iswaran’s receiving of valuables and one count of obstruction of justice, according to the charge sheet.

During Iswaran’s trial, the court heard how the minister had asked Ong to bill him for the Doha trip on the private jet, after he discovered the anti-graft agency had seized the flight manifest for an unrelated case.

Justice Vincent Hoong, who presided over Iswaran’s case, said on Thursday the minister’s request to be billed was a deliberate move to obstruct the course of justice and try to evade investigation.

Channel NewsAsia said Ong’s court hearing was adjourned until pre-trial proceedings on November 15.

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