WASHINGTON: Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier held captive in Afghanistan for five years before being freed in a prisoner swap with the Taliban, pleaded guilty Monday to desertion and endangering fellow troops for walking away from his unit in 2009.

“I left my observation post on my own,” Bergdahl told a court martial in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, according to CNN. “I understand leaving was against the law.”

The decision to plead guilty put an end to more than two years of legal jousting over a case that inflamed US political divisions over the Afghan war.

Former POW Bergdahl back in US

Earlier this year Bergdahl’s lawyers sought to have the case against him thrown out after President Donald Trump labelled him a “dirty rotten traitor,” ostensibly prejudicing the case.

Trump had also called during his run for president for Bergdahl to be put to death for desertion.

But the court ruled that Trump’s words, even if he was the incoming commander in chief, did not have any weight in the courtroom.

Asked about Bergdahl’s guilty plea on Monday, Trump said: “I’m not going to comment on him, but I think people have heard my comments in the past.”

Bergdahl, 31, disappeared from Combat Outpost Mest-Malak in rugged Paktika Province, eastern Afghanistan, on June 20, 2009.

Prisoner swap: Taliban release video showing Bergdahl’s handover

After departing the base, leaving behind his firearm, the young soldier was quickly captured by militants and held prisoner by the feared Haqqani faction, a Taliban-linked, Pakistan-based outfit blamed for many deadly attacks on US soldiers.

The Haqqanis are the same group that held a US-Canadian family for five years before they were freed last week in what Pakistan’s army described as a rescue operation.

A search and rescue mission was launched and some of Bergdahl’s former comrades have accused him of putting their lives in danger by his actions. He was eventually freed in a May 2014 deal after the United States released five Afghan detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

A private first class at the time of his disappearance, he was automatically promoted twice in captivity, first to the rank of specialist and then sergeant.

Ex-Taliban POW Bergdahl ‘returns to US military duty’

Bergdahl has said he never intended to join the enemy but instead meant to go to another base to report problems in his military unit.

The case divided the American public, with many regarding him as a classic deserter to the enemy but others viewing him as representative of the difficulties US service members have under the conditions of the country’s long war in Afghanistan.

And president Barack Obama’s decision to trade five Taliban detainees for Berghdahl sparked outrage from critics, including other serving and former soldiers, who accused the president of trading “terrorists” for a “traitor.”

In a serial podcast on his case two years ago broadcast by National Public Radio, Bergdahl said that he “left his post to try to stir controversy in order to get the attention of top military officials so he could explain problems he saw in the Army.”

But later, he told the podcast, “Suddenly, it really starts to sink in that I really did something bad. Or, not bad, but I really did something serious.”

Bergdahl pleaded guilty to one count of desertion and a second of misbehavior before the enemy, also referred to as endangering troops.

The first charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison while the second could mean up to life in prison.

The court will now turn to hearing arguments over his sentence. According to reports, soldiers who were injured in the search to find him could testify.

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CAMBRIDGE: Scientists in the United States and Europe have for the first time paired the detection of gravitational waves, the ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein, with light from the same cosmic event, according to research published on Monday.

The waves, caused by the collision of two extremely dense neutron stars some 130 million years ago, were first detected in August by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories, known as LIGO, in Washington state and Louisiana as well as at a third detector, named Virgo, in Italy.

Gravitational waves: Why the fuss?

Starting two seconds later, observatories across earth and in space detected a burst of light in the form of gamma rays from the same part of the southern sky, which analysis showed was likely from the same source.

“Imagine that gravitational waves are like thunder,” astronomer Philip Cowperthwaite, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement.

US trio win Nobel for finding Einstein’s gravitational waves

“We’ve heard this thunder before, but this is the first time we’ve also been able to see the lightning.”

The observations confirmed that gold, platinum and other heavy metals were blown into space by the aftermath of the merger of the stars, supporting the theory that such cataclysmic events are likely the source of these metals.

Less than two years have passed since scientists working at labs including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology first detected gravitational waves coming off two black holes.

The gravitational waves had been predicted by Einstein in 1916, as an outgrowth of his groundbreaking general theory of relativity, which depicted gravity as a distortion of space and time triggered by the presence of matter.

Scientists win $3 million for detecting Einstein’s waves

Three US scientists who made that discovery were awarded the Nobel prize in physics this month. The new finding confirmed another theory of Einstein’s that gravitational waves and light travel at the same speed, roughly 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second, scientists said.

The LIGO instruments work in unison and use lasers to detect remarkably small vibrations from gravitational waves as they pass through the earth.

Previously, scientists could only study space by observing electromagnetic waves such as radio waves, visible light, infrared light, X-rays and gamma rays.

Those waves encounter interference as they travel across the universe, but gravitational waves do not, offering a wealth of additional
information.

The National Science Foundation, an independent US government agency, provided about $1.1 billion in funding for the LIGO research over 40 years.

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MARAWI: The head of the Islamic State group in Southeast Asia, who figures on the US “most wanted terrorists” list, has been killed in the battle to reclaim a militant-held Philippines city, the country’s defence minister said Monday.

Isnilon Hapilon’s death came during a push to end the four-month siege of Marawi, a battle that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and raised fears that IS was seeking to set up a regional base in the southern Philippines.

President Rodrigo Duterte and security analysts say Hapilon has been a key figure in the militant outfit’s drive to establish a Southeast Asian caliphate as they suffer battlefield defeats in Iraq and Syria.

Philippines’ Duterte warns terrorists: ‘I’ll be harsh’

“(Our troops) were able to get Isnilon Hapilon and Omar Maute. They were both killed,” Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters, referring to another fighter who led the attack with Hapilon on Marawi in May.

The US government had offered a $5 million bounty for information leading to Hapilon’s arrest, describing the 51-year-old as a senior leader of the southern Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group, which the US considers a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Lorenzana said Philippine ground forces mounting a final assault on the militants in Marawi killed Hapilon and Omarkhayam Maute, one of two brothers who led a militant group allied to Hapilon, early Monday.

Philippines’ Duterte under fire over ‘sickening’ rape joke

DNA tests will be carried out on the two bodies because of the reward offer from the US and Philippine governments, he added.

“The implication of this development is that the Marawi incident is almost over and we may announce the termination of hostilities in a couple of days,” Lorenzana said.

Philippine authorities have made several previous announcements on the imminent end of the conflict, but observers believe this time the forecast is likely to be accurate.

Pro-IS gunmen occupied parts of Marawi, the Islamic capital of the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23 following a foiled attempt by security forces to arrest Hapilon, authorities said.

The Philippine military says Hapilon joined forces with the Maute group to plan the rampage.

Since then more than 1,000 people have been killed and 400,000 residents displaced.

Philippines rejects ‘interfering’ European aid

Duterte has imposed martial law across the southern third of the Philippines to quell the militant threat.

The insurgents have withstood a relentless US-backed bombing campaign and intense ground battles with troops that have left large parts of Marawi in ruins.

Defence chiefs last month said other Philippine militant leaders had been killed in the battle for Marawi.

Troops were still pursuing Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad in the Marawi battle zone, Lorenzana said on Monday, describing him as the “conduit” between IS and local militant groups.

The restive south of the mainly Catholic Philippines is home to a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency and to extremist gangs that have declared allegiance to IS including the Abu Sayyaf and Maute groups.

Hapilon is believed to have been involved in 2001 kidnappings of three Americans, two of whom were later killed.

Hapilon was based in Basilan island in the strife-torn south but authorities said in January that he had moved to the Mautes’ base in Lanao del Sur province, 300 kilometres (180 miles) east, to create an alliance and to establish an IS presence there.

Marawi is Lanao del Sur’s capital and largest city.

The deaths of Hapilon and Maute signal the end of the militant groups, the armed forces chief said on Monday.

Philippines’ Duterte warns of ‘revolutionary government’

“This means their centre of gravity has crumbled,” General Eduardo Ano said.

“We just needed to get these two (leaders) to make sure the leadership, the centre of gravity falls, and elsewhere even the Maute-ISIS (fighters) in other areas would also crumble.”

However an analyst said the deaths of the leaders would likely prompt retaliatory attacks from their followers and allies, with young leaders seeking to take their place.

“Terrorism will take a new form in the post-Marawi period because these terrorist groups linked to ISIS continue to innovate and their actions are evolving,” Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, told AFP.

“It’s going to be a new battle.”

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Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has said army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has every right to express his opinion on the country’s economic situation.

“If everyone is free to give their opinion on economy, then why can’t the army chief talk about economy” Abbasi said in an interview on Aaj television on Monday night.

Premier Abbasi’s comments came two days after one of his party’s senior lawmakers, Rana Afzal Khan, said the army chief should comment on the economy only at the National Security Committee – and not publicly.

DG ISPR should refrain from commenting on economic issues: Ahsan Iqbal

The premier’s remarks came in the backdrop of a simmering controversy stirred by a recent spat between Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal and chief military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor.

Last week Maj Gen Ghafoor said in a TV interview that “if the economy is not bad, it isn’t good either”. Ahsan hit back immediately advising the military spokesperson to “refrain from commenting on the economy… [because] irresponsible statements could damage Pakistan’s image globally”.

‘Disappointed’ by Ahsan’s knee-jerk reaction, Maj Gen Ghafoor said he, in his capacity as the military spokesperson, spoke on behalf of Pakistan Army. And that he had only repeated what army chief Gen Qamar said at a seminar in Karachi a day earlier.

Gen Qamar voiced concerns at the country’s ‘sky-high debt’ and called for broadening tax base and bringing in financial discipline to break the ‘begging bowl’.

The verbal duel provided grist to rumour mill as analysts and TV anchors talked about strain in civil-military relations.

“There might be difference of opinion… [but] There is no civil-military tension,” Premier Abbasi said in Monday’s interview.

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TUNIS: Tunisia’s navy has found the bodies of 26 migrants at sea a week after their boat collided with a navy vessel, bringing the death toll to 34, the defence ministry said.

On October 8, a migrant boat sank following a collision with a navy vessel off the coast of the Kerkennah islands in the Mediterranean.

At the time, the defence ministry said eight migrants drowned and 38 others were rescued, while NGOs spoke of dozens still missing.

Tunisian navy rescues 100 migrants, hours after eight drown

On Sunday night, a navy search and rescue vessel spotted the remains of the migrant boat and pulled out 10 bodies, the ministry said in a statement.

The bodies of 16 other migrants were found on Monday, defence ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati said, putting the overall death toll so far from the collision to 34.

One of the migrants rescued after the tragedy told AFP that 90 people had been on board, hoping to make their way to Italy.

Italian navy rescues Pakistani migrants from boats

An NGO, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, estimates the boat carried between 80 and 100 migrants.

According to the International Organization for Migration, there has been a rise in the number of migrants trying to make the perilous sea crossing from Tunisia to Europe since summer.

Small vessels have been heading for the Italian islands of Sicily and Lampedusa.

Flavio di Giacomo, an Italian spokesman for the IOM, told AFP earlier this month that 1,400 Tunisians had arrived in Lampedusa and western Sicily in September alone.

Pakistanis among 356 migrants rescued by Tunisia near Italy island

This is compared to 1,200 registered in Italy for all of 2016.

The FTDES said in a report last year that half of Tunisian youths from low-income areas were thinking of leaving the country, and one in three was prepared to do so clandestinely.

It blamed the situation on increasing poverty and unemployment in the North African country.

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NEW DELHI: Five years after the fatal gang rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi, the Indian capital was on Monday paired with Brazil’s Sao Paulo as the world’s worst megacities for sexual violence against women in a poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The December 2012 attack of a 23-year-old woman was a watershed in the fight for women’s rights in India, the world’s largest democracy, prompting thousands to take to the streets demanding action against rising sex attacks. The public outcry not only forced authorities to strengthen gender laws, establish speedy courts for rape and set up a fund for rape victims, but also opened up the conversation on sexual violence in the largely conservative, patriarchal nation.

However Delhi – a metropolis of more than 26 million people – remains known as India’s “rape capital”. And alongside Sao Paulo, it came joint bottom in the survey when experts on women’s issues were polled about the risk women run of encountering sexual violence in 19 different megacities.

Clashes over Indian guru’s rape conviction kill 22

“I’m not surprised by the results as they’re based on perceptions. India and Brazil have seen a lot of media attention on sexual violence in recent years,” said Rebecca Reichmann Tavares, head of UN Women in India who also worked in Brazil.

“Sexual violence in both these cities is, of course, a reality, but there isn’t any definitive data to suggest that rates are higher in Delhi and Sao Paulo than any other city.”

The survey asked 380 experts in cities with populations of more than 10 million to assess the risk of sexual violence and harmful cultural practices to women, as well as rank women’s access to health care and economic opportunities.

US woman alleges gang-rape in Delhi

The Egyptian capital Cairo was rated the most dangerous city for women overall and rated third worst for sexual violence, followed by Mexico city and Dhaka. Tokyo was seen as the safest city for women in terms of sexual violence.

High-profile rapes

Public awareness on sex attacks in Delhi has surged since the Delhi bus attack and thrown a global spotlight on gender violence in the world’s second most populous nation.

Indian newspapers offer a daily array of sex crimes. Girls molested in school, professional women raped by taxi drivers while commuting home, village teens duped, trafficked and sold to brothels in the red-light districts of cities.

Brazilians are fed a similar diet, with multiple reports of assaults on women and girls in Sao Paulo – Brazil’s most populous city with 21 million people, according to UN figures.

Post-mortem done on Delhi gang-rape accused

In September, thousands of Brazilian women took to social media to demand better support and access to justice after a series of sex attacks on buses where the accused were released due to a lack of evidence. In one case, the released man was re-arrested two days later after he was accused of attacking another woman on a bus.

“I do not believe in the system. If I file a police report, I’m afraid the accused will come after me,” said Clara Averbuck, a writer who was assaulted by a taxi driver and started an online campaign – #MyAbuserDriver – that went viral.

Safety apps

In India, authorities have been forced to act. This includes stricter punishments for gender crimes, a 24-hour women’s helpline and fast-track courts for rape cases as well as a fund to finance crisis centres for victims.

Women’s desks in many of the city’s police stations have been established, thousands of police received gender sensitisation classes, and there is increased patrolling, surveillance and more checkpoints across Delhi at night.

Delhi gang-rape: Edging closer to justice, suspects charged

Companies, charities, students and even individuals have also launched countless initiatives – from smart phone safety apps and gender lessons for taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers to women’s self-defence classes and female cab services. Voracious media reporting on sex crimes in both countries has helped break the silence, shame and fear of rape, but reports of sex crimes continue to rise.

There were 2,155 rapes recorded in Delhi in 2016 – a rise of 67 percent from 2012, according to police data. Sao Paulo had 2,287 rapes reported in July this year compared to 2,868 in all 2016, according to government figures, but Brazilian think-tank, the Institute of Applied Economic Research, estimates only 10 percent of rape cases are reported.

Gislaine Caresia, coordinator of policies for women at Sao Paulo’s city hall, said authorities were looking for private partners to implement a project to track violence against women which could help indicate how to target the crime. “Everyone has this perception that domestic and family violence has increased but we do not have specific data of it,” Caresia told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In a slum in Delhi’s outskirts, auto-rickshaw driver Suresh sits on a bed in a one-roomed concrete house, telling how his teenage sister was dragged to a nearby wasteland and raped by a neighbour as she walked home from college in March.

Indian rape survivor gang-raped by same men years later

“This city is unsafe. We know it is, but what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to lock her up?,” he said. “We see the stories every day in the news. Nothing has changed since the Delhi gang rape”

Authorities attribute the surge in numbers to more victims reporting crimes, rather than more sexual violence occurring.

Activists say it is probably a combination of both. Campaigners said sex attacks were often not reported due the “dishonour” associated with rape, as well as a lack of faith in a male-dominated, often insensitive police and judicial system.

“For too long, the perpetrators have acted with a sense of impunity. Certainty of punishment is the best deterrent,” said Rishi Kant, a Supreme Court lawyer and activist from Shakti Vahini, a Delhi-based charity that supports victims.

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