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Californians were voting Tuesday in a ballot measure likely to further tilt the liberal state towards the Democrats, as the party seeks to neutralize gerrymandering ordered by President Donald Trump.Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies want voters to approve a temporary re-drawing of electoral districts that could give the Democratic Party five more seats in the scramble for control of the US Congress in next year’s midterm elections.They say they are only doing it to level the playing field after Texas Republicans pushed through their own redistricting — under White House pressure — to help maintain a narrow Congressional majority that has so far given Trump carte blanche.Republicans say it is a naked power grab that will disenfranchise the party’s voters in California, a state where they are heavily outnumbered by Democrats.Unsurprisingly in today’s America, one figure looms over the proceedings, with a finger perpetually hovering over the caps lock.”The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote on his social media site on Tuesday.That prompted a now-customary zinger from Newsom, who is staking his claim to Democratic leadership — and a likely White House shot — on standing up to Trump.”The ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE,” the governor wrote.- Gerrymandering -Electoral districts across the US are traditionally drawn following the national census taken every ten years, theoretically so the electoral map reflects the people who live there.In reality, most boundaries are party political decisions, so whichever grouping is in power at the time gets to set the rules for the next decade’s contests.California did away with such partisan gerrymandering under former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving the power instead to an independent panel. But if “Proposition 50” passes on Tuesday, politically drawn boundaries will take effect for all elections until the next census, when the panel will once again determine the maps.The vote is “a political ink-blot test,” Los Angeles Times columnist Mark Barbarak wrote Monday.”A reasoned attempt to even things out in response to Texas’ attempt to nab five more congressional seats. Or a ruthless gambit to drive the California GOP to near-extinction.”What many California voters see depends on, politically, where they stand.”People at the polls in Los Angeles on Tuesday said the vote was about fighting back against Republican shenanigans elsewhere in the country.”I’ll take anything we can get, anything we can get. We got to sometimes use the methods they’re using, whatever will get us moving forward,” Casey Mason told AFP.Makela Yepez said he wasn’t particularly pleased that the state’s independent boundary commission was taking a temporary back seat, but felt the ends justified the means.”I think we’re using the tools that are at our disposal, and I think we have to have faith that it’s going to work,” he said.

A new lawsuit alleges streaming giant Spotify turns a blind eye to vast networks of bots that inflate streaming figures to benefit megastars such as Drake at the expense of lesser-known artists.The legal action, filed in a US federal court on Sunday, claims the Canadian rapper gets millions of dollars in revenue from such fake streams, while Spotify garners significant commercial value from appearing to have more users than it really does.”This mass-scale fraudulent streaming causes massive financial harm to legitimate artists, songwriters, producers and other rightsholders,” says the lawsuit, filed by rapper RBX — Snoop Dogg’s cousin.Spotify uses a pro-rata model to pay artists from a central pot of income derived from subscriptions and advertising.Inflated streaming figures for high-profile performers would therefore diminish the proportion of money available for other artists.”Data analysis shows that billions of fraudulent streams have been generated with respect to songs of ‘the most streamed artist of all time,’…professionally known as Drake,” the suit says.”But while the streaming fraud with respect to Drake’s songs may be one example, it does not stand alone.”The class action suit — in which Drake is not named as a defendant and which does not allege any wrongdoing on the part of the “One Dance” hitmaker — is “brought on behalf of Plaintiff and a similarly situated class of music recording artists, song writers, performers, and other music rights holders.””Plaintiff gives a voice to more than one hundred thousand rightsholders who, among other things, may be unable or too afraid to challenge Spotify, a powerful force in the music business whose failure to act has caused significant problems and great financial harm.”Spotify is the only defendant named in the suit, which focuses on the company’s alleged unwillingness to clamp down on fraud.”To satisfy constant pressure from shareholders to grow the business and increase stock prices, Spotify needs an ever-expanding population of users to engage on its platform,” the suit says.”The more users (including fake users) Spotify has, the more advertisements it can sell, the more profits the company can report, all of which serves to increase the purported value delivered to shareholders.”The suspicion of streaming fraud has beset services like Spotify since they displaced downloads as the main way music is consumed.A company spokesperson told AFP that they were unable to comment on pending litigation, but denied Spotify benefited from such fraud.”We heavily invest in always-improving, best-in-class systems to combat it and safeguard artist payouts with strong protections like removing fake streams, withholding royalties, and charging penalties,” the spokesperson said.The lawsuit is not the first legal action on streaming fraud.Last year Drake accused record label Universal Music of conspiring to inflate streaming figures for a diss track by rival Kendrick Lamar.That case — part of a high-profile beef between the two men — was dismissed in October. Drake is appealing the decision.

Global stocks mostly fell Tuesday as investors weighed the recent tech rally on Wall Street against growing fears of an AI bubble and concerns over the US interest-rate outlook.A flood of multibillion-dollar investment into artificial intelligence has been a key driver of the surge in mostly technology equities across the globe this year, sending valuations to record highs.But there is increasing speculation that tech-led gains may have gone too far and a painful correction could be on the way.”Wall Street CEOs have also put investors on notice for a correction in the next 1-2 years,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at trading group XTB.”It seems like the investment community has taken heed of this message,” she added.Shares of Palantir slumped 8.0 percent despite the company reporting a 63 percent surge in revenues to $1.2 billion, enabling profits of more than three times the year-ago level.”We have very high expectations with respect to what the future has in store for AI stocks,” said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments.”The second big concern is the fact that there’s lack of (momentum) in other areas in the market” besides AI, he said.US chipmaker Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom, meanwhile, said a one-billion-euro ($1.1 billion) industrial artificial intelligence hub would soon be launched in Germany, Europe’s latest bid to catch up in the global AI race.This came a day after ChatGPT-maker OpenAI signed a $38 billion deal with Amazon’s AWS cloud computing arm.Wall Street’s main indices retreated on Tuesday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite finishing down more than two percent.In Europe, the Paris and Frankfurt stock markets ended lower.The British pound retreated against the dollar after finance minister Rachel Reeves hinted at tax rises in a pre-budget speech.That helped London’s FTSE 100 index that includes many multinationals whose earnings are inflated by a weak pound, and which finished the day slightly higher. The weakness in North America and Europe tracked a lackluster day in Asia, with Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks falling.Cautious remarks from US Federal Reserve officials did little to provide support for further buying after the central bank’s chief, Jerome Powell, indicated last week that a third rate cut this year was not definite.Data on Monday indicated some further weakness in the US economy, with a key gauge of activity in the manufacturing sector contracting more than expected and for an eighth straight month in October as demand and output weakened.In company news, shares in British energy giant BP were flat after a drop in oil prices on Tuesday overshadowed its strong earnings report.Crude prices shed over half a percent as the market anticipated oversupply.”The oil price slid amid ongoing concerns about oversupply despite OPEC+’s decision to pause output increases early next year,” said analyst Axel Rudolph at IG trading platform.Shares of biotech company Metsera soared more than 20 percent after it disclosed that it received a fresh takeover bid from Novo Nordisk of about $10 billion that topped a raised bid from Pfizer to about $8.1 billion. Pfizer shed 1.4 percent.- Key figures at around 2120 GMT -New York – Dow: DOWN 0.5 percent at 47,085.24 (close)New York – S&P 500: DOWN 1.2 percent at 6,771.55 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 2.0 percent at 23,348.64 (close)London – FTSE 100: UP 0.1 percent at 9,714.96 (close) Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.5 percent at 8,067.53 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.8 percent at 23,949.11 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.7 percent at 51,497.20 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.8 percent at 25,952.40 (close)Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.4 percent at 3,960.19 (close)Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.1479 from $1.1520 on MondayPound/dollar: DOWN at $1.3019 from $1.3140Dollar/yen: DOWN at 153.66 yen from 154.22 yenEuro/pound: UP at 88.17 pence from 87.66 penceWest Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.8 percent at $60.56 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: DOWN 0.7 percent at $64.44 per barrelburs-jmb/md

The US government shutdown entered its 35th day on Tuesday, matching a record set during Donald Trump’s first presidency, as his administration warned of potential chaos at airports going into one of the busiest travel periods of the year.The federal closure appears almost certain to become the longest in history, with no major breakthroughs expected before it goes into its sixth week at midnight — although there were fragile signs in Congress that an off-ramp was closer than ever.The government has been grinding to a halt since Congress failed to approve funding past September 30, and pain has been mounting as welfare programs — including aid that helps millions of Americans afford groceries — hang in limbo.About 1.4 million federal workers, from air traffic controllers to park wardens, have been placed on enforced leave without pay or made to work for nothing.The Trump administration sounded the alarm Tuesday over turmoil at airports nationwide if the shutdown drags into a sixth week, worsening staff shortages, snarling airport lines and closing down sections of airspace.”So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos… You will see mass flight delays,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told a news conference in Philadelphia.”You’ll see mass cancelations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”Thanksgiving air travel is expected to set a new record this year, the AAA projected — with 5.8 million people set to fly domestically over the November 27 holiday. More than 60,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are working without pay, and the White House has warned that increasing absenteeism could mean chaos at check-in lines.  Airport workers calling in sick rather than working without pay — leading to significant delays — was a major factor in Trump bringing an end to the 2019 shutdown, the joint-longest alongside the current stoppage.Some lawmakers are hoping a slew of elections taking place in New York, Virginia, New Jersey and California on Tuesday will provide the momentum they need to reopen the government. But both sides remain dug in over the main sticking point — health care spending.- ‘Defiance’ -Democrats say they will only provide votes to end the funding lapse after a deal has been struck to extend expiring insurance subsidies that make health care affordable for millions of Americans.But Republicans insist they will only address health care once Democrats have voted to switch the lights back on in Washington.While both sides’ leadership have shown little appetite for compromise, there have been signs of life on the back benches, with a handful of moderate Democrats working to find an escape hatch.A separate bipartisan group of four centrist House members unveiled a compromise framework Monday for lowering health insurance costs.Democrats believe that millions of Americans seeing skyrocketing premiums as they enroll onto health insurance programs for next year will pressure Republicans into seeking compromise.But Trump has held firm on refusing to negotiate, telling CBS News in an interview broadcast Sunday that he would “not be extorted.” The president has sought to apply his own pressure to force Democrats to cave, by threatening mass layoffs of federal workers and using the shutdown to target progressive priorities.Last week, his administration threatened to cut off a vital aid program that helps 42 million Americans pay for groceries for the first time in its more than 60-year history, before the move was blocked by two courts.Trump nevertheless insisted Tuesday — in apparent defiance of the court orders — that the food aid would be disbursed only after the government shutdown ends.The White House later clarified, however, that it was “fully complying” with its legal obligations and was working to get partial SNAP payments “out the door as much as we can and as quickly as we can.”

New Yorkers looked set to elect a young Muslim leftist as mayor Tuesday as US voters cast judgment for the first time on Donald Trump’s tumultuous second presidency in nationwide local elections.While Zohran Mamdani’s rise has dominated headlines, elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey could also be revealing gauges of the US political mood nearly 10 months since Trump’s return to the White House.Democratic wins in those states may indicate a revived opposition ahead of next year’s midterm elections to decide control of Congress.In New York, Mamdani, aged just 34, is a self-described socialist who was virtually unknown before his upset victory to secure the Democratic nomination.He has focused on reducing living costs for ordinary New Yorkers, building support through his informal personal style and social-media-friendly clips of him walking the streets chatting with voters.Unabashedly playing the race card, President Trump on Tuesday labelled Mamdani, who would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, as a “Jew hater.””Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” the Republican president posted on his social media platform.Mamdani was on about 44 percent in latest polls, several points ahead of former state governor Andrew Cuomo who is running as an independent.Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels citizen crime patrol group, was on 24 percent — a margin that could sway the vote if enough of his backers shifted to Cuomo. Turnout by midday, with nine hours of voting remaining was 1.195 million, exceeding the total of 1.14 million votes cast in 2021, which saw the election of current Mayor Eric Adams who bowed out when his reelection campaign was hit by scandals and corruption allegations. He endorsed Cuomo, 67.Denise Gibbs, 46, a doctor of physiotherapy, voted at a school in Brooklyn.”I sure hope it improves the city. I want to see it decrease divisiveness and increase livelihoods of working-class households and services for children,” she said, wearing green scrubs.Polls close at 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Wednesday).- Mamdani’s improbable rise -The race has centered on cost of living, crime and how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York.Syracuse University political science professor Grant Reeher said a Mamdani win would set up a clash with Trump.”Trump will treat New York City more aggressively,” he said. “There will be some kind of political showdown.”Mamdani’s improbable rise highlights the Democratic Party’s debate over a centrist or a leftist future.”I think that this has to be a party that actually allows Americans to see themselves in it,” Mamdani said last week.But Cuomo said there was “a civil war in the Democratic Party.” “You have an extreme radical left that is run by the socialists that is challenging what they would call moderate Democrats. I’m a moderate Democrat,” he said after voting.In New Jersey, Democratic Party candidate Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, faces off against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman backed by Trump.In Virginia’s race for governor, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger has been polling ahead of Virginia’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.Both sides wheeled out big guns, with former president Barack Obama rallying support for Spanberger and Sherrill over the weekend and Trump scheduling tele-rallies for both Virginia and New Jersey on the eve of voting.Obama also reportedly spoke to Mamdani over the weekend but — reflecting the internal party debate — held off endorsing him.Emailed bomb threats involving polling stations across New Jersey forced the brief closure of several sites, said state Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Mamdani called the threats “incredibly concerning.” “It’s an illustration of the attacks we are seeing on our democracy,” he said after voting in Astoria, Queens.

Dick Cheney, arguably the most powerful vice president in US history as George W. Bush’s number two during the September 11, 2001, attacks and ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, died Monday. He was 84.Cheney forged an influential role in the traditionally inconsequential job and was a major power behind the throne as Bush thrust the United States into the so-called “war on terror,” with a dark underbelly of renditions, torture and the Guantanamo prison site.A hated figure by many on the left, he made a remarkable pivot toward the end of his life when he opposed Donald Trump’s ultimately successful campaign to return to the White House in 2024.Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman from Wyoming, said her deeply Republican father had voted for Trump’s Democratic opponent Kamala Harris.Cheney, also a former congressman and defense secretary, “died due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease,” according to a family statement.As 46th vice president, Cheney served for two terms between 2001 and 2009.The job is often frustrating for ambitious politicians, but Cheney’s Machiavellian skills gave him considerable sway.He helped usher in an aggressive notion of executive power, believing the president should be able to operate almost unfettered by lawmakers or the courts, particularly during wartime.It was an approach that saw Bush enter military quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and prompt major controversy over his impact on civil liberties.Bush on Tuesday hailed his former vice president as “among the finest public servants of his generation” and “the one I needed” when in the White House.Cheney was “a patriot who brought integrity, high intelligence and seriousness of purpose to every position he held,” Bush added.White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt pointedly offered no condolences when asked Tuesday about Cheney’s death.Trump “is aware of the former vice president’s passing,” she told a briefing, noting White House flags had been lowered to half staff “in accordance with statutory law.”- Neo-con -Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on January 30, 1941, Cheney grew up mostly in the sparsely populated western state of Wyoming.He attended Yale University but dropped out of the prestigious East Coast school and ended up earning a degree in political science back home at the University of Wyoming.He spent ten years in Congress as a representative for Wyoming before being appointed defense secretary by George H.W. Bush in 1989.Cheney presided over the Pentagon during the 1990-91 Gulf War, in which a US-led coalition evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.As vice president, Cheney brought his neo-conservative ideology to the White House and played a greater role in making major policy decisions than many of his predecessors in the role.Cheney was one of the driving forces behind the decision to invade Iraq following the September 11, 2001, attacks by Al-Qaeda on New York and Washington.His inaccurate claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction fueled the drumbeat for war ahead of the 2003 US invasion.Seen as Bush’s mentor on foreign policy, Cheney remained loyal to his former boss and a staunch defender of Bush-era policies.In a 2015 interview, Cheney said he had no regrets over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and credited a so-called “enhanced interrogation program” for the successful hunt for Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US forces in 2011. Despite a preference for privacy, Cheney was rarely out of the headlines.He once hurled an expletive at a Democratic senator on the Senate floor and infamously accidently shot his friend Harry Whittington in the face during a hunting trip.His professional life was punctuated by a series of health scares — he suffered five heart attacks between 1978 and 2010, including one in 2000, the year he and Bush were elected to the White House.He underwent quadruple bypass surgery and had a pacemaker fitted in 2001, which was later replaced.

Dick Cheney achieved influence unrivaled for a vice president in shaping US foreign policy, ruthlessly pursuing military might and advocating pre-emptive war to reshape the world.The descent of Cheney, who died Tuesday, was also spectacular. His hawkish brand of neoconservatism, including the invasion of Iraq, began to be repudiated even before he left office, and today both major US parties largely reject his views.With America shellshocked by the September 11, 2001 attack, Cheney — his grim demeanor accentuated when he spoke from dark bunkers — advocated a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, with the United States attacking first before threats materialize, toppling hostile regimes if needed.Cheney also led the shattering of Western norms on treatment of prisoners, indefinitely jailing terrorism suspects without charges and approving “enhanced interrogation” techniques such as waterboarding that are widely considered torture.Cheney, a veteran Washington insider with no ambition to be president himself, quickly towered over the less experienced commander-in-chief, George W. Bush.”It would be hard to argue that he was not the most influential vice president,” said Aaron Mannes, a scholar of the American vice presidency who lectures at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.Cheney gained clout by focusing narrowly on national security and enabled Bush by “pushing an open door.””There were a lot of stories of him being a sort of secret president — the Darth Vader — running everything. I’m not sure that’s true,” Mannes said. “It was more a matter of where he put his weight.” – Iraq bloodshed -The decision to invade Iraq still reverberates across the Middle East and haunts American foreign policy.Hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as more than 4,000 US troops, died as the United States toppled Saddam Hussein and the country descended into sectarian bloodshed.Cheney by the end of his 2001-2009 term began to lose policy debates.Bush sided with his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and pursued diplomatic options such as talks with North Korea defying Cheney’s motto, “We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it.”Democrat Barack Obama swept to power rejecting Cheney’s worldview, offering an outstretched hand to those who “unclench your fist.”Less expected, Cheney’s Republican Party shifted direction, as many veterans came home to struggling communities and drug addiction.Donald Trump last year called Cheney “the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars,” though as president he has been eager to exert the swagger of force himself.In another turn that would have been unthinkable when Cheney was vice president and a hate figure for Democrats, he said he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris last year over Trump.He joined his daughter, former congresswoman Liz Cheney, who unlike many Republicans has spared no words in criticizing Trump as anti-democratic.Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who backed the Iraq war, nonetheless said she believed Americans still backed Dick Cheney’s idea that a “strong America is a power for good in the world.””And I don’t think Donald Trump would disagree with that characterization of his own stance,” she said.- Never prosecuted -Obama vowed on taking office that the United States “does not torture” but also decided not to prosecute anyone, hoping to turn the page.The prison for indefinite detentions on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — which Obama wanted to close within a year — remains open a decade and a half later, although with far fewer inmates.Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, which long urged an investigation against Cheney, said the US breaking of norms emboldened other nations to torture.She also pointed to allegations of mistreatment of migrants sent by Trump to El Salvador.”There is a direct line from Vice President Cheney to the torture that the US is now complicit in in El Salvador,” she said.”It’s really a shame that accountability never closed the door for the United States on torture.”

US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned Tuesday that the government shutdown will cause air travel chaos if it lasts another week, worsening staff shortages, snarling airport lines and closing down sections of airspace.”So if you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos… You will see mass flight delays,” he told a news conference in Philadelphia.”You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”With the standoff in Congress over health care spending set to become the longest in history, Trump’s Republicans and the opposition Democrats are facing increasing pressure to end a crisis that has crippled public services.More than 60,000 air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers are working without pay, and the White House has warned that increasing absenteeism could mean chaos at check-in lines.  Airport workers calling in sick rather than working without pay — leading to significant delays — was a major factor in Trump bringing an end to the 2019 shutdown, the joint-longest alongside the current stoppage, at 35 days.After five weeks of failed votes on a House-passed resolution to reopen the government, the Senate rejected the legislation for a 14th time on Tuesday.Democrats say the only path to reopening the government is a Trump-led negotiation over their demands to extend subsidies that make health insurance affordable for millions of Americans — the key sticking point in the standoff.But Trump has insisted he won’t negotiate with Democrats until the shutdown is over.

The Nigerian government Tuesday said it does not tolerate religious persecution, responding to US President Donald Trump’s threats of military intervention over the killing of Christians by jihadists in the country.Trump said over the weekend that he had asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Africa’s most populous nation because radical Islamists are “killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers”.Roughly evenly split between a mostly Christian south and Muslim-majority north, Nigeria is home to myriad conflicts, which experts say kill both Christians and Muslims, often without distinction.Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar insisted that his country’s constitution did not allow religious persecution.”It’s impossible for there to be a religious persecution that can be supported in any way, shape or form by the government of Nigeria at any level,” Tuggar told a press conference in Berlin. Nigeria has a “constitutional commitment to religious freedom and rule of law”, the foreign minister added.Claims of Christian “persecution” in Nigeria have found traction online among the US and European right in recent months.Flanked by his German counterpart Johann Wadephul, Tuggar warned against any attempts to divide Nigeria along religious lines, drawing parallels with civil war-ravaged Sudan.”What we are trying to make the world understand is that we should not create another Sudan,” he said.”We’ve seen what has happened with Sudan with agitations for the partitioning of Sudan based on religion, based on tribal sentiments and you can see the crisis even when the partitioning was done according to religion or according to tribe,” Tuggar added.- Muslim victims too -Trump has not suggested any division of Nigeria along religious lines, but said without evidence that “thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter”.Ikemesit Effiong, an analyst with the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence consultancy, suggested that Nigeria’s fears of partition are informed by history, with several former British colonies having experienced “violent partitions and secessions”.”Nigeria is actually sensitive to the fact that while our diversity can be a strength, it can also be a lever of division, of violence and eventually of partition,” he told AFP.Ethnic, religious and regional divisions have flared with deadly consequences in the past — notably during the country’s 1967-70 civil war — and still shape the country’s modern politics.The west African political and economic bloc ECOWAS, based in Abuja, issued a statement Tuesday saying that militant groups in the region, including in Nigeria, “target innocent civilians of all religious denominations”.The statement, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump’s recent comments, said claims that one particular group is targeted by violence “seek to deepen insecurity in communities and weaken social cohesion”.Claims of a “Christian genocide” have been pushed in recent years by separatist groups in the southeast.US-based firm Moran Global Strategies has been lobbying on behalf of separatists this year, advising congressional staff on what it said was Christian “persecution”, according to lobbying disclosures.Central Nigeria sees violence between Fulani Muslim herders and mostly Christian farmers, though experts say the conflicts are sparked by dwindling land and resources rather than religious differences.Nigeria also faces “bandit” gangs in the northwest who stage kidnappings, village raids and killings.The north’s population is mostly Muslim — meaning most of the victims are, too.Nigeria’s newly appointed chief of defence staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, told reporters on Monday that “there are no Christians being persecuted in Nigeria”.Analysts have suggested that Washington’s amped-up rhetoric could be related to Abuja rejecting demands to accept non-Nigerian deportees expelled from the United States as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.burs-sn-nro/sbk