The last time Ethiopia held competitive elections, in 2005, lawyer Daniel Bekele was arrested during protests denouncing fraud and ended up serving more than two years in prison.

This time around, as the country prepares for landmark polls next year, Daniel is in a very different position: as head of the national human rights body tasked with ensuring Ethiopia curbs the same authoritarian tactics that once landed him behind bars.

With that goal in mind, Daniel's Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is taking on a bigger public profile, denouncing recent abuses including the use of lethal force by soldiers and police against unarmed demonstrators.

But its statements have drawn rebukes from lawmakers and officials in Ethiopia's restive Oromia region, highlighting challenges facing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's stated goal of empowering institutions.

In an interview with AFP, Daniel, who was appointed last year, said Ethiopia faced a "very deep human rights crisis" that shows little sign of abating.

"Unfortunately, the political crisis is far from getting any solution, in terms of the polarisation of politics in the country and how that polarisation is unfolding along ethnic lines, along religious lines and sadly fuelling violent conflict," he said.

"Ethiopia, it seems to me, is going through the pains of transition from repressive rule to democratic rule."

- A chequered past -

Daniel inherited a commission that had scant credibility among international activists.

Despite unmatched access to political prisoners, for years it did little to raise awareness about abusive detention conditions, let alone improve them, said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director for Human Rights Watch.

"It was clear that there was no interest politically in giving them the space to work on sensitive or controversial topics," she said.

The pattern persisted through protests that brought Abiy to power in 2018.

In a 2019 report, Amnesty International accused the commission of a "brazen bias against victims".

After Abiy tapped him to lead the commission, Daniel began overhauling its staff and searching for external funding to supplement its "very tiny" annual budget of 85 million Ethiopian birr (around $2.3 million).

It is currently finalising its first major investigation under Daniel: a look at days of turmoil that left more than 160 dead following the killing in June of pop star Hachalu Hundessa from the Oromo ethnic group.

This type of probe "needs to be led and needs to be championed by Ethiopians themselves," said Daniel, who previously worked for both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty.

"When you have a national institution and local groups taking the lead on this, it means the work is being done by people who know the context, who know the culture, who know the language."

- Early days -

Daniel's heightened visibility coincides with worries about backsliding on human rights under Abiy, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize. 

Daniel has defended the government in some cases.

After Amnesty published a report in May accusing security forces of committing 39 extrajudicial executions in Oromia, Daniel told a regional broadcaster that, while the reported killings were "shocking", researchers had "failed to give proper, adequate context".

In the interview with AFP, he declined to echo groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch that are warning about a return to repressive practices.

More than 9,000 people were arrested in the aftermath of Hachalu's killing, and some 5,728 have been charged in connection with the violence.

"It's a large number of people to be detained, but it's also important to recall about the large scale of the violence," Daniel said when asked about the arrests, adding that judicial proceedings so far were "reasonably fair".

The suspects include opposition politicians who insist the cases against them are politically motivated.

"It's a bit early to make a judgement on this," Daniel said. "It's not very surprising that political opponents would consider any move against them as politically motivated."

As for the coming elections, which have yet to be scheduled, Daniel said he would work to keep human rights issues "front and centre" before, during and after the voting. 

"Unless this election is credible, is free and fair, it's going to be a big setback for Ethiopia's attempt for a democratic transition," he said.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Hackers launched large-scale attacks on two Iranian government institutions this week, a senior official said on Thursday, without giving details on the targets or the suspected perpetrators.

Some government bodies had since temporarily shut down internet services as a precaution, Abolghasem Sadeghi, from the government’s Information Technology Organization, told state TV.

“The cyber attacks which happened on Monday and Tuesday are under investigation,” Sadeghi said. They were “important and on a large scale,” he added.

Iran says it is on high alert for online assaults, which it has blamed in the past on the United States and other foreign states.

U.S. officials said in October 2019 that the United States had carried out a cyber attack on Iran after drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities, which Washington and Riyadh blamed on Tehran. Iran denied involvement in the attacks, which were claimed by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

The United States and other Western powers have also accused Iran of trying to disrupt and break into their networks.

Sources told Reuters this April that hackers working in Iran’s interests had targeted the personal email accounts of staff at the World Health Organization during the coronavirus outbreak. Tehran denied any involvement.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have escalated since 2018 when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

PARIS: French police raided Wednesday the home of Muslim NGO BarakaCity’s founder and arrested him, the organization, which broadcast the raid live on its social channels, said.

Idriss Sihamedi, the NGO’s president, was beaten up and arrested in front of his four children.

“Search this morning at the home of the president of BarakaCity,” it wrote on Facebook and Twitter, along with images “of the beds turned over, tables broken, baskets and linen turned over.”

“Idriss was violently beaten by a police officer who pressed his head against the [floor] tiles while he was not resisting and cooperating.”

A BarakaCity employee later filmed the interior of the premises, showing torn switches, broken surveillance cameras and doors, books and files completely turned over.

No official statement has yet been made by the authorities but Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin had recently accused Sihamedi of “condoning terrorism” before deleting his tweet.

In a press conference on Tuesday, he said a total of 73 mosques, private schools and workplaces have been closed since the beginning of this year “in the fight against radicalization.”

The raid is one of many that took place across France following President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement to fight “Islamist separatism” in the country.

He argued that “Islamic separatism” was problematic, and added: “The problem is an ideology which claims its own laws should be superior to those of the republic.”

Sihamedi had called for a united Muslim response to Macron’s attempts to control Muslim public life and private beliefs.

Macron’s speech was widely criticized by French Muslims due to fears that the bill, which will be submitted to parliament in December, could trigger abuse against them.

Some NGOs or organizations which “act against the law and values of the country” might be closed or face tight financial audits, according to the controversial plan.

It has sparked criticism, with some representatives of the Muslim community describing the move as Islamophobic and discriminatory./aa

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign’s Twitter account was briefly restricted on Thursday, causing an outcry from Republican lawmakers who accused social media companies of acting like “speech police” and vowing to hold Twitter responsible.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump taps the screen on a mobile phone at the approximate time a tweet was released from his Twitter account, during a roundtable discussion on the reopening of small businesses in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., June 18, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

Twitter temporarily blocked the @TeamTrump account from sending tweets after it posted a video about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son that it said violated its rules.

The video referred to a New York Post story from Wednesday that contained alleged details of Hunter Biden’s business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company and said the former vice president had met with an adviser of the company.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement that Republican-led Senate committees have previously concluded that Joe Biden engaged in no wrongdoing related to Ukraine. He also denied such a meeting had taken place.

A Twitter spokesman said earlier on Thursday that the @TeamTrump account, and the accounts of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the New York Post, had been blocked from tweeting because of the company’s policies on hacked materials and posting private information. He said the accounts may need to delete the rule-breaking posts to continue tweeting.

The Trump campaign, with 2.2 million followers, was sending tweets again on Thursday afternoon. It said in a new tweet it was “re-posting the video Twitter doesn’t want you to watch.” A Twitter spokesman told Reuters that the site would not take action as alterations to the video meant it no longer violated its policies.

“It’s going to all end up in a big lawsuit and there are things that can happen that are very severe that I’d rather not see happen, but it’s probably going to have to,” Trump said when asked about the move by Twitter.

McEnany likewise began tweeting again on Thursday, saying she regained access after deleting her post on the report.

Both Facebook Inc and Twitter took proactive steps on Wednesday to restrict dissemination of the Post story in the hours after it was published.

Facebook reduced how often the story shows up in users’ news feeds and elsewhere on the platform, an action spokesman Andy Stone said the company takes temporarily pending fact checker review “if we have signals that a piece of content is false.”

Facebook did not respond to Reuters questions on whether its fact-checking partners were working on rating the Post’s story.

Twitter prohibited its users from posting links to two New York Post articles about Hunter Biden, saying they violated its policies against posting private information and “hacked materials.”

But Twitter’s Chief Executive Jack Dorsey tweeted on Wednesday “our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

A Twitter spokesman declined to answer Reuters questions on whether Dorsey had been involved in the decisions on these restrictions on Wednesday or Thursday.

Republicans on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee responded to Twitter’s actions by tweeting a link to a copy of the New York Post’s story on its website. Twitter blocked the link but later said this had been in error and reversed the action.

The @nypost has not tweeted in over a day, suggesting that they are still blocked from posting.

A spokeswoman for the New York Post declined to comment, other than referring Reuters to the Post’s own coverage.

SENDING SUBPOENAS

Republican lawmakers slammed the social media companies’ actions on Thursday. U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the blocking of the story was “reprehensible” and that there should be no “speech police” in the United States.

After Twitter imposed the restrictions, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee moved to subpoena Dorsey.

Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and Republican senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley said the committee will vote on sending the subpoena on Tuesday, Oct. 20 and plans to have Dorsey in front of the committee by Oct. 23.

Hawley also called for sending a subpoena to Facebook.

“We’re going to finally have an accounting that is long overdue,” Graham said. “This to me crystallizes the problem better than anything I could think of.”

Senator Marco Rubio urged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to re-examine Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google are set to appear before the Senate Commerce Committee later this month at a hearing to discuss Section 230 - a legal immunity which offers tech companies protection from liability over content posted by users and enables them to act in “good faith” to remove objectionable content.

Pai said on Thursday the agency will move forward to set new rules to clarify the meaning of the provision.

The calls to reform Section 230 and penalize tech companies have been intensifying but it is unlikely there will be action on the law by Congress this year.

LEONA VICARIO, Mexico (AP) — As the dangerous Hurricane Delta closed in on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Ricardo Pimentel opened his home — to about 300 dogs.

There were plenty of other critters too: Dozens of cats were harbored in his son’s room; his daughter’s room served as a refuge for chicks, bunnies and even a hedgehog; a patio became a haven for a flock of sheep.

Not surprisingly, the house smelled terrible, he says. But it was worth it: All survived the storm.

“It doesn’t matter if the house is dirty, it can be cleaned,” he says. “The things they broke can be fixed or bought again, but what’s beautiful is to see them happy, healthy and safe, without wounds and with the possibility of being adopted.”

It all started with an Oct. 6 social media post. Pimentel told friends he had cut branches and boarded up windows at the Tierra de Animales (Land of Animals) shelter he founded nearly a decade ago about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Cancun, where he also lives with his family.

He warned of the hurricane’s devastating power. Concerned that stores might remain shut after the storm, leading to food shortages, he asked for donations.

“If I lived with just 10 or 20 dogs, I wouldn’t worry much, but here we have hundreds of animals and we can’t afford the luxury of not having enough food,” he said.

To keep the animals safe from the impending storm, he moved them inside. It took hours to lead the hundreds of canines indoors by leash.

A subsequent online post included photos of what looked like a carpet in his hallway. A closer look revealed that the carpet was alive — many, many dogs, crowded together. The post was shared widely on social media and grabbed headlines across the globe.

Pimentel was so busy in the midst of the storm — the hurricane downed trees, knocked out power and prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents and tourists along the Yucatan Peninsula’s resort-studded coast — that he was unaware the post had gone viral.

Afterward, he was surprised by the generosity of people from around the world who donated thousands of dollars. It was, he said, perhaps the biggest fundraising moment since he founded Tierra de Animales. And local residents stepped forward to help clean up the damage at the shelter.

Pimentel has always preferred the company of animals. He dropped out of college and spent years fixing motorcycles and adopting stray dogs before fulfilling his childhood dream by starting the shelter in 2011. Today, some 500 animals live on nearly 10 acres (4 hectares) of land.

On a recent day, Clarita, a friendly, long-horned cow who loves to be petted by visitors, roamed inside a corral where a sign read: “Leave footprints of kindness for others to follow.” Workers had been repairing hurricane damage to an enclosure where goats Pepito and Elvis live with Morfeo, a bull saved from the slaughterhouse. “They became his friends,” Pimentel said.

Some Tierra de Animales dogs were rescued from dogfighting rings, or were left unable to stand after being brutally beaten. Over the years, many have been adopted by families in Mexico, Canada and the U.S.

Pimentel gets help from workers, volunteers and family, including 20-year-old daughter Luna, who is studying to become a veterinarian. Whenever he feels overwhelmed and needs inspiration to continue his mission, he looks at photos of rescue dogs who found a new home.

“We would like to think that thanks to all this attention, somebody would like to be part of the story and say: ‘I adopted a dog saved from that famous Hurricane Delta.’”

The flu vaccine protects you from seasonal influenza, not the coronavirus — but avoiding the flu is especially important this year.

Health officials and medical groups are urging people to get either the flu shot or nasal spray, so that doctors and hospitals don't face the extra strain of having to treat influenza in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Not to mention the confusion factor: The illnesses have such similar early symptoms that people who get the flu may mistakenly think they have COVID-19, said Dr. Gregory Poland, an infectious disease specialist at Mayo Clinic.

Only a test can tell the two apart.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the flu vaccine for everyone starting at 6 months of age, and suggests getting it by the end of October.

The CDC says the vaccine will not cause you to fall ill with the flu, and that the protection it provides takes about two weeks to kick in. And the flu vaccine isn't perfect but studies show if the vaccinated get sick, they don't get as severely ill.

A few flawed studies over the years have attempted to link the flu vaccine to increased risk of other respiratory infections, but experts say there is no evidence that's true.

KOMOTINI, Greece 

Greece installed two electronic devices that can produce strong sound waves that cause deafness in the area bordering Turkey to prevent possible refugee waves entering the country. 

Two Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) that can also cause severe pain and serious health problems to those who are exposed to it were delivered to police responsible for the border, according to media reports.

Four drones, 15 thermal cameras, five Zodiacs boats and 10 armored patrol vehicles (APV) were also integrated into the border surveillance system.

Greece also began building a new fence across its northeastern border with Turkey.

The fence will be 27 kilometers (17 miles) long and eight elevated observatories will be constructed to be used by the army./aa

ANKARA

The number of people worldwide who have succumbed to the novel coronavirus exceeded 1.1 million Thursday, according to Worldometer, which compiles COVID-19 data from around the globe.

Its website reported that the death toll from the virus has reached 1,101,420, while the number of cases across the world currently stands at 39,105,472.

The highest number of fatalities have been recorded in the US, with 222,656.

It is followed by Brazil with 152,460 deaths, India with 112,144, Mexico with 84,898, the UK with 43,293, Italy with 36,372, Spain with 33,553, Peru with 33,512, France with 33,125 and Iran with 29,605.

COVID-19, which was first detected in December in China’s Wuhan province, has spread to 189 countries and regions.

More than 29.3 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus./aa

BOGOTA, Colombia 

The number of coronavirus cases in the Americas surpassed 18 million Wednesday, with the death toll reaching 590,000, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).    

PAHO announced that it is conducting pilot studies in Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico and Suriname, making available new antigen diagnostic tests recently approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) to carry out affordable, reliable and rapid testing, even in remote communities. 

“By providing results quickly, the new test empowers frontline health workers to better manage cases by isolating patients to prevent further spread and to begin treatment immediately,” PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said in a press briefing. 

“If distributed widely, this new test will transform our COVID response,” she added. 

El Salvador  

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said the country was experiencing a second wave of the coronavirus.­ 

"We have confirmed a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. Although hospitals remain relatively empty and the pandemic is still relatively under control, the number of consecutive days with an increase in cases indicates that a national outbreak has begun," Bukele said on Twitter. 

El Salvador has recorded 30,766 coronavirus cases and 904 fatalities. 

Argentina  

While in most Latin American countries, the number of infections is decreasing, cases in Argentina continue to rise.  

With a total of 931,967 registered infections as of Wednesday, the country is already among the five countries with the most cases worldwide.  

Meanwhile, protests have been taking place in the South American nation against a seven-month quarantine which was recently extended until Oct. 25. 

Brazil  

Despite dismissing COVID-19 as a "little flu" and being criticized for his handling of the pandemic, President Jair Bolsonaro, who tested positive for the virus on July 7, has never been more popular in his country. 

Some 40% of Brazilians surveyed across 127 municipalities in September regarded Bolsonaro as "good/excellent,” according to a study from the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics.  

Brazil has over 5,140,000 COVID-19 cases and 151,747 deaths.  

Uruguay 

Authorities in Uruguay reported 51 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, at least 17 of them linked to a nursing home, taking the total number of infections in the country to 2,388. 

Tourism Minister Germán Cardoso said he does not think Uruguay will be able to open its borders with Argentina and Brazil in the short term because neighboring countries are still struggling with rising cases. 

"I see it as very difficult in the current circumstances to open normally. It does not depend only on me, but with the rate of contagion in Argentina and Brazil, it is really very complex,” he said. 

Mexico  

Mexico has reported a total of 825,340 cases and 84,420 deaths. 

Authorities say the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher due to a lack of testing in the country./aa