Most Recent Posts

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has eluded an arrest order for war crimes, successfully returning home from South Africa, where the nation's high court had issued an order to arrest him.

Al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 on charges that he committed war crimes and genocide in Darfur, where 300,000 people died. But that didn't stop him from flying to South Africa last week for an African Union leaders' summit.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports for Morning Edition from Johannesburg:

Listen to the Story

3:52

Playlist

Download

Embed

Embed

Transcript

"Although in the past South Africa has had a diplomatic word in the ear of President Bashir and told him not to come to South Africa because, of course, it is a signatory to the Rome Treaty, which established the International Criminal Court. This time, South Africa said come and that all the heads of state invited to the African Union Summit here in Johannesburg had diplomatic immunity."

Ofeibea adds that "the leaders of the African Union have instructed member states not to cooperate with the ICC, which they say is anti-African, anti-poor, singling out African leaders."

In South Africa Monday, officials said that they'll look into how the leader was able to elude the arrest order that had been requested by both the ICC and a national human rights group, the Southern African Litigation Center.

Over the weekend, a South African judge issued an interim order preventing al-Bashir from leaving the country. And on Monday, a panel of high court judges said the country is obligated to arrest the Sudanese president.

From Johannesburg, reporter Nastasya Tay tells our Newscast desk:

"Just after midday, a jet believed to belong to the Sudanese president took off from Waterkloof Air Force Base, just outside Pretoria. His name allegedly wasn't on the passenger manifest, so it took court officials several hours to confirm that the ICC indictee had actually fled.

"His departure — in direct violation of an interim court order passed Sunday afternoon — has been met with public outrage and condemnation."

Tay adds that government officials "say there'll be an investigation into how the wanted Sudanese president was able to leave the country. "

Omar Al-Bashir

South Africa

Sudan

Hillary Clinton walked a delicate line on trade as she held her first official press conference of her campaign on Monday.

Instead of staking out a clear position on whether she supports the current Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and fast-track authority for the president, the Democratic presidential candidate instead dismissed the current stalemate in Congress as a "process issue."

"I think this is chance to use this leverage so the deal does become one that more Americans and more members of Congress can vote for," the former secretary of state said after a campaign event in New Hampshire. "I will wait and see what the deal is, and then I will tell you what I think about it."

On Friday, House Democrats dealt President Obama a stinging blow when they rejected a key part of the trade package that would allow for funding for training and education for workers would lose their jobs because of the Pacific Rim trade deal. Even an 11th hour visit by President Obama to Capitol Hill couldn't sway enough votes from his own party. The White House dismissed the failed vote as a "snafu" and House Republicans will try again this week.

Progressive Democrats, who have led the charge against the trade package, have grown frustrated that Clinton hasn't taken a concrete position on the deal. Her surging Democratic rival, independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has been a leading critic of the TPP in the Senate. As secretary of state, she once called the TPP the "gold standard in trade agreements."

Now, taking reporters questions for the first time in months, Clinton blamed the secrecy of exactly what is in the deal for its failure and tried to downplay her husband, former president Bill Clinton's, history of championing free trade agreements, including the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

"The issue for me is, what's in the deal? And I think now there's an opportunity for the president and his team to reach out and meet with the people who have said on the floor, like [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi did, that we need a better deal," she said.

Clinton suggested that the White House could work with Democrats who could be swayed to assuage their concerns and get a better outcome on the bill.

"I believe that you take whatever happens to you in a negotiation and you try to leverage it," the former New York senator said.

The nearly 20-minute question-and-answer session also ended a long drought with the press. After she announced via social media in April that she was running for president, Clinton had answered few questions or shrugged many off, even as there were mounting concerns about her private email server at the State Department and donations to her family's charitable foundation. But with her official launch on Saturday in New York City, her top aides indicated that hesitation would change.

In her press conference Monday, Clinton also tried to walk a fine line on President Obama's struggles to revive the American economy. She argued that he was handed a difficult situation just after he was elected in 2008 but that she would be laying out her own plan to create jobs and spur growth.

"When the president came into office, the deck was at the bottom of an abyss," she recalled. "I don't want us to live in a state of collective amnesia about what we're facing."

"I will be laying out policies that I think builds on what the president has done, what my husband has done, what other Democrats have done, what even other Republicans have done," said Clinton. "I think President Obama has done a lot that has put us in a good position, and I will go further."

Clinton also addressed the question of her family's own finances — she took heat a year ago after saying her family was "dead broke" after leaving the White House, but they are now earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid speeches. She framed it instead as a story of success and hard work with the help of others.

"I want everybody to have the same opportunities that I had and that my husband had. He faced a lot of obstacles in his life and had a great set of people who urged him on and supported him," said Clinton.

"I don't think Americans are against success — I think Americans are against people who get on the top of the ladder and start pulling it up so nobody else had the same chance that they had, and then act as though they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and the log cabin they built themselves," she added. "At some point, we're all in this together, and those of us who do have opportunities ought to be doing more to help other people have the same."

Clinton laughed off a question about what advice she would have for another candidate dealing with both the advantages and baggage of a famous last name — Republican Jeb Bush, who announced his campaign for president just after Clinton was finishing her remarks.

"I'm going to let the Republicans decide who their nominee ends up being," said Clinton. "I'm running on my record and on my positions, but I'm very proud that I have experience alongside my husband in the White House and serving with Barack Obama as secretary of state."

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld the government's broad discretion to give only a cursory explanation for refusing to grant a visa to the spouse of an American citizen. The justices divided 5-to-4, concluding that a consular officer's citation of unspecified "terrorist activities" was enough to justify barring a spouse without further explanation.

Fauzia Din came to the United States as a refugee from Afghanistan in 2000, seeking "security" as a woman, and "freedom." She subsequently became a U.S. citizen and in 2006 returned to Afghanistan to marry an Afghan native whom she and her family had long known.

Back in the states, she petitioned for an immigrant visa for her husband. The petition was granted and her husband was directed to the American embassy in Pakistan for an interview. There he was told he would be receiving a visa soon, but it never came.

Three years later, Din's congressman made inquiries on her behalf. The State Department then informed Din that her husband's application was denied because of "terrorist activities," despite his long service as chief of staff for Afghanistan's Minister of Education. Further inquiries proved fruitless, so Din went to court seeking a more complete explanation of what her husband had supposedly done. In court, Din argued that the Constitution's guarantee of due process of law bars the government from separating an American citizen from his or her spouse without further explanation for the spouse's exclusion.

Din won in the lower court, but the Supreme Court reversed that ruling by a splintered vote. Writing for three members of the court, Justice Antonin Scalia acknowledged that the Constitution bars the government from depriving a person of liberty. However, he said, at the time the Constitution was written, liberty meant only freedom from "imprisonment or restraint," and was never intended to include the right to live with one's husband. True, he said, the court has for decades sought to expand the concept of liberty to include certain fundamental rights such as the right to marry. "Even if one accepts this textually unsupportable doctrine," he said, "Din's claim still fails" because nothing is preventing her from being married. There is no constitutional right to live in the U.S. with one's alien spouse, he observed. Joining his opinion were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote separately for himself and Justice Samuel Alito. The two seemed to deliberately avoid the doctrinal fight over what constitutes liberty—a fight that will undoubtedly display itself in the Court's upcoming decision on same-sex marriage.

Instead, Kennedy and Alito said that even assuming Fauzia Din does in fact have a liberty interest in having her husband live here, Congress has decided that at least in the area of national security, the government does not have to give more details than it did in this case — namely giving a specific citation to the section of the law barring entry to anyone involved in terrorist activities.

A simple citation to a section of the law leaves Fauzia Din with little to no information to rebut. Yet, Monday's court decision seemed to move the goal post at least a bit on visa denials, according to NYU law professor Burt Neuborne. He observes that under the old law, the government didn't have to give any further explanation for denying a visa. But, he notes, when you add the Kennedy-Alito opinion to the opinion of the four dissenters, the rule on exclusion does seem to be less rigid.

"Six of them at least say you can't be turned away without an explanation," he said, and "that in itself is an advance " because "the old law was they didn't even have to tell you why."

The four dissenters said that in their view, the government should have to give more details about why a spouse is being excluded. Only citing a statutory provision is not enough, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote. "It is analogous to telling a criminal defendant that he is charged with 'breaking the law,'" he said by way of illustration. Such a generality simply doesn't provide enough information to allow a defendant, or Din's spouse, to mount a defense.

"I do not deny the importance of national security," said Breyer. "But protecting ordinary citizens from arbitrary government action is fundamental" to our constitutional system.

The Supreme Court's decision marks the end of the road in court for Din and her husband. But Din and her lawyers have amassed further evidence of his character and submitted it to the State Department in an attempt to get officials to give the visa application a second look.

Iconic American gun maker Colt Defense has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The company says in a statement adds that its Chapter 11 filing late Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware will allow for a faster sale of business operations in the U.S. and Canada.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the filing was expected because Colt "failed to win the support of bondholders for a debt reshaping agreement." It adds: "Colt plans to try to reduce its $355 million debt burden via a court-supervised auction of its business, to generate proceeds to repay some of its lenders."

Colt says that Sciens Capital Management has proposed to buy "all of Colt's assets and assume secured liabilities and all liabilities related to existing agreements with employees, customers, vendors, and trade creditors."

The process is expected to be completed in 60 to 90 days. Colt says its existing secured lenders have agreed to provide $20 million to allow for continuation of operations.

It's not the first time Colt has seen financial trouble.

Sam Colt opened a firearms plant in 1836, but sales weren't great and it closed six years later. In 1855, Colt founded Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, which has manufactured American guns ever since.

Bloomberg says of Colt's more recent travails:

"Among other failings, the severed halves of Colt somehow missed the post-2008 'Obama surge' as much as other U.S. gun manufacturers. Whipped up by NRA warnings that the Democratic president intended to toughen gun control, consumers cleared gun store shelves of ammunition and weapons. Better-prepared manufacturers such as Glock saw sales rise sharply. ... Colt's Manufacturing, for its part, offered only a limited selection of the handguns so much in demand."

Business Insider reports that Colt hit another rough patch when a contract with the U.S. military ended in 2013.

The company says President and CEO Dennis Veilleux will remain in place during the bankruptcy process.

bankruptcy court

colt

Guns