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UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD ) economists say the vast sums of money flowing out of Africa through illegal, corrupt practices are undermining progress made by African countries to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.UNCTAD’s just released Economic Development in Africa Report 2020 estimates illicit financial flows out of Africa are costing the continent $89 billion annually.The economists say the scale and scope of illicit capital flight, which is equivalent to 3.7 percent of Africa’s gross domestic product, and the economic consequence of COVID-19, threaten to reverse gains made in health, education and other areas. Nigerian Vice President, Oluyemi Osinbajo warned that the illicit financial flows out of Africa also undermine the foundations of democracy, provide financial incentives for terrorist activities, and fuel conflict on the continent.”The enormity of efforts required to tackle illicit financial flows is evidenced in the many dimensions the scourge presents itself,” he said by video conference from Lagos, Nigeria.  “It manifests through harmful tax policies and practices, abusive transfer pricing, trade mispricing and mis-invoicing, legal exploitation of natural resources, as well as official corruption and organized crime.  UNCTAD reports the annual $89 billion outflow from Africa nearly matches the combined total annual inflows of official development assistance and foreign direct investment. UNCTAD Secretary General, Mukhisa Kituyi said Africa needs an estimated $200 billion a year to achieve the SDGs, but only about half that amount is available.  He said illicit financial flows represent a major drain on capital and revenues in Africa and this puts development prospects on the continent at risk.”Countries with high illicit financial flows invest about 25 percent less in health, 58 percent less in education than comparable countries on the continent,” Kituyi said. “And, half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa do not have sufficiently developed domestic transfer pricing rules and regulations in their jurisprudence.”That, Kituyi said, is a handicap for governments that have limited capacity to challenge multi-national enterprises in their domestic courts on these illegal practices. The report finds tackling capital flight and illicit financial flows would provide a large potential source of money to finance investments in infrastructure, education, health and productive capacity.UNCTAD economists said curbing illicit capital flight could generate enough capital by 2030 to finance nearly half of the $2.4 trillion needed by sub-Saharan African countries for climate change adaptation 
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New research suggests that taking hot baths, soaking in hot tubs or using saunas can prevent cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes. The research was presented last week at the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), held virtually this year. Hisayuki Katsuyama, co-author of the new study, is a physician at Kohnodai Hospital in Ichikawa, Japan. He says that while drug treatments have helped people with Type 2 diabetes live better, longer lives, daily habits such as diet and exercise are still important for these patients.  Katsuyama says he and his colleagues looked at previous research suggesting heat therapy, such as baths, hot tubs or saunas, can lower risks of fatal heart disease and stroke, along with having a lower body fat percentage, and thought it could be promising as a Type 2 diabetes treatment. To test the theory, the researchers recruited 1,297 patients with Type 2 diabetes who regularly visited an outpatient hospital unit in Ichikawa between October 2018 and March 2019. They documented their bathing habits and noted water temperature, frequency and duration of each session, as well as a variety of medical notes.  Across the board, people who bathed more often had lower body mass indexes (BMI), diastolic blood pressure and glycated hemoglobin, a key risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. In their presentation, the researchers say their findings suggest daily heat exposure by hot tub bathing can “contribute to improvements of glycemia, hypertension and obesity, and thus, can be a therapeutic option for patients with Type 2 diabetes.” In an interview, Katsuyama says he suspects patients may benefit from heat therapy in a way similar to the benefit they get from exercise. He says both seem to improve insulin sensitivity and enhance energy expenditure.  Other research suggests bathing increases blood circulation, body temperature and the production of nitric oxide in the body, which appears to confer the positive benefits. Katsuyama says more research is needed before more conclusions can be made. The study has not yet been published or peer reviewed.
 
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Residents of a Mombasa slum won a landmark payout in July over a pollution by a lead smelter that poisoned locals. Kenya’s government was ordered to pay $12 million to residents within 90 days because of its failure to enforce environmental regulations with the smelter, which closed in 2014. But the government has appealed the payout, as Lenny Ruvaga reports from Mombasa, Kenya.    VIDEOGRAPHER: Amos WangwaPRODUCER: Jason Godman
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As European governments tussle over imposing sanctions on Belarus after the results of last month’s election, some former diplomats and analysts are urging those nations not only to target President Alexander Lukashenko and his top officials in Minsk but also his allies in Russia. “The limited scale of these sanctions may undermine their effectiveness,” said Anders Åslund, a former Swedish diplomat. He said an important aim of any sanctions should be not only to punish those involved in the disputed Aug. 9 election but also “to deter both Belarusians and Russians from assisting the Lukashenko regime in its ongoing crackdown against the country’s pro-democracy movement.” Åslund said just as the West aims to punish “the enforcers of Lukashenko’s violent crackdown,” it should identify and “sanction his Russian collaborators.” FILE – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko takes his oath of office during his inauguration ceremony at the Palace of the Independence in Minsk, Belarus, Sept. 23, 2020.”Russia’s disinformation agents from RT and other state media are already known and should be sanctioned. Flight records between Moscow and Minsk indicate that Russian security advisers and senior Kremlin personnel have also been involved in coordinating the suppression of the pro-democracy opposition in Belarus. The EU and U.S. sanctions response to the crisis in Belarus should also reflect this,” Aslund outlined in a commentary for the Atlantic Council, a New York-based research group where he is a fellow. The Baltic states have already imposed sanctions on 30 Belarusian officials. The European Union has prepared a sanctions list targeting 40 officials with a mixture of travel bans and asset freezes. But imposition has been held up by Cyprus’s refusal to approve the action unless sanctions are imposed by the 27-member bloc on Turkey in a separate high-stakes dispute over oil drilling rights in the Mediterranean. Lukashenko was sworn in for a sixth term last week in a ceremony without prior fanfare or publicity — an effort to avoid it becoming a target of protesters. Opposition leaders and Western governments denounced the inauguration as illegitimate. Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose supporters believe she was the real winner of the election, has been urging the EU to follow through on its sanctions threat. She met with EU foreign ministers this month in Brussels. FILE – Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya speaks during a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, Sept. 21, 2020.”EU leaders have reasons not to push sanctions, but I asked them to be braver,” Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to Lithuania after the election, told reporters after meeting foreign ministers. “Sanctions are important in our fight because it’s part of pressure that could force the so-called authorities to start dialogue with us in the opposition council.” French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday that Belarus’s leader must step down. “It’s clear he has to go,” Macron told Le Journal du Dimanche, a weekly magazine. “It is a crisis of power, an authoritarian power that cannot accept the logic of democracy and which is hanging on by force. It is clear that Lukashenko has to go,” he said. Vladimir Makei, Belarus’s minister of foreign affairs, accused Western countries of attempting to sow “chaos and anarchy” in the former Soviet republic. “We are seeing attempts to destabilize the situation in the country,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in a video statement.  FILE – Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei speaks during a news conference following talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, not pictured, in Moscow, Russia, Sept. 2, 2020.Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Belarus since the election. An estimated 12,000 people have been arrested. Some key protesters have also faced the threat of their children being seized by authorities. Last week, Britain’s foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said the government is drawing up a list of sanctions against officials in Belarus responsible for overseeing Lukashenko’s reelection or of managing the violent suppression of street protests.  Raab said the British sanctions will be announced in coordination with the United States and Canada. He expressed doubt about targeting Russia, saying the relationship between Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin is complicated and nuanced. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms paved the way for an end to the Cold War and inadvertently to the breakup of the Soviet Union, has called “for a peaceful resolution” of the Belarus crisis. He urged all outside powers, including Russia, not to interfere, suggesting he disapproves of Putin’s efforts to revive a so-called “union treaty” signed in 1999 between Moscow and Minsk that would merge Russia and Belarus. In an interview with Russian news site RBC, Gorbachev appeared to approve of the protesters. “Well done Belarusians! Now, they already have character. This is very good,” he said. FILE – Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attends an event in Moscow, Russia, Nov. 8, 2018.In an interview with a British newspaper, Gorbachev emphasized his disapproval of all outside interference in Belarus.  “All countries must behave very carefully. You must not interfere from the outside. We must give the people of Belarus the opportunity to find a way out of the current difficult situation on their own,” he told Britain’s The Sunday Times newspaper. Uppermost in his mind appeared to be the fear that events in Belarus could seriously worsen East-West relations. He said relations between the West and Russia need to be repaired, fearing a nuclear arms race will spin out of control. In the interview, Gorbachev said the winner of the U.S. election in November should seek to hold a summit with Putin along the lines with the one he held with President Ronald Reagan in Iceland in 1986 that led the two powers to scrap more than 2,000 short-, medium- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles.  “The situation is very worrying,” Gorbachev said. “Whatever the result of the election, we need to resume a dialogue to get out of this frozen situation.” 
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Nearly four years after then-presidential candidate Donald Trump faced questions about his income tax returns during a nationally televised debate, the issue returned to the forefront of the 2020 election as Mr. Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden prepare for their first debate Tuesday night.The New York Times published a report online Sunday with extensive details about nearly 20 years of the tax returns Mr. Trump has not made public since he first launched his campaign in 2015.Asked about the report, President Trump called it “totally fake news.”The Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden gives a speech on the Supreme Court at The Queen Theater, Sept. 27, 2020, in Wilmington, Del.Biden did not make any public comment about Trump’s taxes Sunday, but like Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, the former Vice President has challenged Trump to make his tax returns public.In July, Biden wrote, “The American people deserve to know what Donald Trump is hiding in his tax returns.”Biden, who served as vice president for eight years and has made his tax returns  public, has on his campaign website copies of his state and federal returns from 2016, 2017 and 2018.FILE – U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks during her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement late Sunday saying the Times report shows the need for lawmakers to be allowed access to Trump’s taxes for an oversight audit, and highlighted a provision in a bill the House passed last year that would make presidential disclosures of their personal and business tax returns mandatory.  The measure was referred to the Senate Finance Committee with no further action.Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, said in response to the legislation last year that House Democrats were seeking Trump’s tax information for political purposes and should leave auditing responsibilities to the IRS.“What they are interested in is using their oversight authority to collect as much information about this President’s finances as they can get their hands on,” Grassley said.A list of debate topics released last week ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate did not include any specific mention of the tax issue, but given its history in recent elections the Times reporting makes its inclusion in Tuesday’s event likely.
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The United States is threatening to close its embassy in Baghdad amid frustrations over attacks by Shi’ite militias. News organizations quoted U.S. and Iraqi officials Sunday as saying U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iraqi leaders in recent days that the embassy would close unless Iraq worked to stop attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic sites. Pompeo has not discussed the matter publicly, but the State Department said Sunday that “Iran-backed groups launching rockets at our embassy are a danger not only to us, but to the Government of Iraq.” The United States has demanded Iraqi action before, saying in January that Iraq has an obligation to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities in the country. That message came weeks after the U.S. military responded to a series of attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq with an airstrike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, outside the Baghdad airport. The strike sparked a round of protests in Iraq, with demonstrators, and several Iraqi lawmakers, objecting to the U.S. action as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and calling on the government to expel U.S. troops. The U.S. forces are in Iraq to advise and assist Iraqi forces in their missions against Islamic State militants.  The Pentagon announced earlier this month the U.S. troop presence would drop from 5,200 to 3,000.  
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With just 36 days to go before the U.S. presidential election, battle lines are being drawn over President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called on Republican senators not to confirm her before the November 3 election to allow U.S. voters to have a say, a view key Republican leaders dismiss. Michelle Quinn reports
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