Russian Duma votes to scrap Cold War armed forces deal

MOSCOW (AP) — The lower house of Russia's parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously to formally pull out of a key Cold War-era security deal, more than eight years after Moscow halted its participation. The vote in the State Duma came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin introduced a draft bill on May 10 “denouncing” the Treaty of Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which aimed to prevent Cold War rivals from massing forces at or near mutual borders. The deal was signed in November 1990, but not fully ratified until two years later. The Federation Council, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled upper chamber that generally rubber-stamps legislation that the Duma has approved, is scheduled to consider Russia’s pullout from the treaty next Wednesday. Moscow first announced its intention to completely withdraw from the agreement in early 2015. Since last February, Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine has seen hundreds of thousands of Russian troops pour into the country, which shares a border with NATO members Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary. On Tuesday, Putin’s designated envoy told the State Duma that NATO countries had “made it impossible” for Russia to remain in the treaty by allowing for the alliance’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also described the treaty as “contrary to Russia’s security interests” in an interview published Monday in Parliamentskaya Gazeta, a weekly published by the State Duma. Ryabkov’s remarks were echoed by key deputies during the parliamentary session Tuesday. State Duma speaker Leonid Slutsky charged that the treaty had “long existed only on paper,” while Andrey Kartapolov, the chairman of Russia’s parliamentary committee, said that it had been rendered obsolete by NATO's placing of military infrastructure in Central and Eastern European member states. Ryabkov told lawmakers that completing the withdrawal process would take about six months.

Hilda Baci: Nigerian chef ready to take world cooking record

A Nigerian chef has become a national sensation after cooking non-stop for more than 90 hours in an attempt to break the world record. Hilda Baci has used over 100 different dishes since turning on her cooker at 15:00 GMT on Thursday. Politicians and celebrities have been egging her on, as has the boisterous crowd watching her cook. The current record is 87 hours and 45 minutes set in Rewa, central India in 2019 by Indian chef Lata Tondon. Though no officials of the organisation are at the venue in the upmarket area of Lekki in Lagos, CCTV cameras have been installed to monitor the event. Baci, 27, initially planned to cook for 96 hours - until 15:00GMT on Monday. But the crowd camped outside the venue persuaded her to keep going until she hit the 100-hour mark. She has cooked mostly Nigerian meals, such as jollof rice, as well as different types of rice and pasta, and has also made akara - a popular street food made from deep-fried mashed beans. The food is being handed out to invited guests. She is allowed one assistant at a time, and can take a five-minute break each hour, or the equivalent over several hours. "This attempt is proof of the strength young people can exhibit with the right platform and support," the chef told BBC News Pidgin before starting her marathon cooking session. Baci is showing visible signs of the physical exertion and is getting cold compresses applied to her head, and foot massages during her breaks. A medical assistant is also checking her vital signs. Her attempt has captivated the country, with politicians and celebrities stopping by to cheer her on. Lagos state governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu was at the venue on Sunday, and she also received a call from Nigeria's Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo. "We are proud to have Hilda embarking on this journey in our state. I will continue to follow the updates and look forward to the final declaration," Mr Sanwo-Olu said. Baci is no stranger to the heat of competitive kitchen events. In 2021 she defeated other contestants at the maiden edition of the "Jollof Faceoff", including a Ghanaian rival in the final, to claim the crown for the best version of West Africa's fiercely contested spicy rice meal. She said her passion for cooking was inspired by her mother's culinary techniques and that her recipes were homemade. Additional reporting by Adekola Olawale

Skeletons found in Pompeii ruins reveal deaths by earthquake, not just Vesuvius' ancient eruption

MILAN (AP) — The discovery of two skeletons buried beneath a collapsed wall in the Pompeii archaeological site point to deaths by powerful earthquakes that accompanied the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the first century, experts said Tuesday, in addition to the victims of volcanic ash and gas. The two skeletons believed to be men at least 55 years old were found in the Casti Amanti, or House of Chaste Lovers, beneath a wall that collapsed before the area was covered in volcanic material. The area was likely undergoing reconstruction work at the time of the eruption in A.D. 79, following an earthquake a few days earlier. “In recent years, we have realized there were violent, powerful seismic events that were happening at the time of the eruption,'' said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park. New archaeological techniques and methodology "allow us to understand better the inferno that in two days completely destroyed the city of Pompeii, killing many inhabitants,'' he added, making it possible to determine the dynamic of deaths down to the final seconds. More than 1,300 victims have been found in the archaeological site south of Naples over the last 250 years.

How Russia's Wagner group exploits Africa to fund the Ukraine war

Prigozhin's seemingly endless supply of hired guns in Ukraine requires deep pockets, and a CBS News investigation has found that he's funding his operations in large part by putting his private army to work in Africa. Wagner in Africa The story Wagner tells in a Prigozhin bank-rolled movie aired in the country — innocuously titled "Tourist" — is that his mercenaries are the saviors of CAR. The movie glorifies the mission of these soldiers of fortune as heroes repelling rebel attacks and thwarting a plan to storm the capital and overthrow the president. There was even a Hollywood-style premier in the capital, Bangui, and promotional t-shirts bearing the slogan "Je Suis Wagner." But it's all Russian propaganda, at its most lavish and its most distorted. The paramilitary group does indeed provide the country's President Faustin-Archange Touadéra with mercenary muscle to prevent a coup from toppling his shaky grip on CAR. There's even a statue in Bangui honoring the Russians for bravely protecting women and children. What Wagner doesn't tell you, however, is that it is effectively helping to run CAR through violence, disinformation and a galaxy of shell companies that obscure the exploitation of the country's mineral riches. In a rare moment caught on camera, included in the CBS News report at the top of this article, masked Russian mercenaries can actually be seen guarding the president. The United Nations has accused Wagner of gross human rights atrocities and CBS News has confirmed multiple stories of civilian massacres, executions and rape in CAR. Wagner's bloody entry to CAR Convincing people from CAR to talk to CBS News wasn't easy. Everyone was understandably terrified, convinced that Wagner has eyes everywhere. One man finally agreed to be interviewed on the condition that we change his name, conceal his identity and go to the extraordinary lengths of meeting him in neighboring Cameroon. Usman, as we're calling him, spent a day traveling through military checkpoints in taxis and on the back of motorbikes to cross the border. "Wagner is not here to defend the country," Usman scoffed as soon as he met us. "Whoever told you that, it's a lie!" His family used to be in the gold dealing business, which is a big one in CAR. "It was very prosperous," he said. "It paid for the education of all the children in our family and gave us a good life. We lacked nothing." Then in 2021, Wagner came to his family's small-scale, artisanal mining town. Usman told us that his younger brother was killed, his sisters were raped and their gold business was seized by the Russians. Usman said he was carted off to a makeshift prison cell at the Wagner forces' base, where he was tortured for days and tied up in a bag with a rope. He claims he eventually escaped and that he's been in hiding ever since. "What they did to my country, seeing my parents… As a man it makes you feel useless," Usman said, breaking down weeping as he spoke with us. "They stole our possessions, burnt down our home… I even see Wagner soldiers riding on my motorbike with my name still on it." He paints a painful, poignant image, which encapsulates the extent to which the Russian mercenaries have taken everything from one of the poorest countries in the world. What's in it for Wagner? Wagner has a pact forged in blood. The pay off? Unfettered access to CAR's gold mines and forests, which fund the group's criminal and paramilitary activities far beyond Africa. "Like the war in Ukraine," explained Usman, connecting the conflict 6,000 miles away directly with his own country's suffering. "How else do you explain that Russia is under sanctions, but their economy remains unaffected. It's like witchcraft!" David Otto, of the Geneva Centre for African Security and Strategic Studies, explained succinctly that Wagner is compensated for its services to the autocratic regime in CAR with lucrative mining rights and forestry concessions. "It's all about following the money," Otto told CBS News. "You've got to understand that these private militaries, they need money to function, they need resources to function… We're talking about billions of dollars here, perhaps even more." But following the money isn't clearcut, Otto added, explaining that Wagner's operations in CAR are always covert — Wagner would never have its actual name on the registration of a company involved. All that glitters is gold Exporting gold through the country's international airport, however, surely would be difficult for a group designated by the U.S. as a transnational criminal organization. Not for Wagner. "They have control of the airport and the staff," explained Usman. "There's a cargo plane flying between Moscow and Bangui." It's as simple as that. Wagner, it appears, is flying CAR's gold right out of the country, straight to the Russian capital. CBS News secretly recorded a Wagner cargo plane moments after it landed at Bangui's M'Poko Airport. It taxied toward the mercenary group's base, situated near the runway. We were told the planes usually arrive in the capital on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and nobody is allowed near the aircraft. Security is extremely tight. Working with Grey Dynamics we tracked that plane, which went dark over Africa, dropping off air traffic monitors. If a plane wants to conceal its identity the pilot can deliberately turn off the transponder. The same plane eventually reappeared, in the United Arab Emirates. Within half an hour of its landing, another plane also touched down on the tarmac, from Moscow. The two aircraft overlapped for eight hours — plenty of time to potentially  transfer cargo in a country with lax customs regulations. Wagner finds a new revenue stream in timber CBS News' investigation found that Prigozhin has also expanded his operations to include the plunder of CAR's virgin redwood forests. But conflict timber — trees taken by an armed group to perpetuate or take advantage of a conflict — is even harder to hide than gold. Documents shared with CBS News by All Eyes on Wagner, a research group that investigates Wagner's alleged criminal activities and human rights abuses in multiple countries, show a company called Bois Rouge received a forestry concession in 2021 from the CAR government to fell trees in the country's Lobaye region. On paper, Bois Rouge is headed by a woman who is a CAR national. But the company also appeared at a Shanghai trade exhibition as a Russian firm, with Artem Tolmachev listed as its sales manager. His tax records, seen by CBS News, reveal that he's paid by two companies linked to Prigozhin: Service K and Ferrum Mining. CBS News secretly filmed Wagner trucks leaving the group's military base near the capital loaded with wood. The convoy was protected by Russian mercenaries all the way to the border with Cameroon, where they were waved through before continuing to the town of Garoua-Mboulai. At the border, the drivers presented a safe passage document stamped by the CAR government. The document functions like a diplomatic badge — it means vehicles cannot be searched. "We know Wagner often marks their wood with white or green dots," Usman told us, "and it's cut in a very specific way." CBS News filmed several trucks that were part of the Wagner convoy with those tell-tale signs. "Serious organized crime" The drivers transport the wood to Cameroon's port of Douala, or the deep-sea port of Kribi about a three-hour drive further south. With hidden cameras and posing as potential buyers, CBS News visited a customs office run by officials from the neighboring Central African Republic at the busy Douala port. There was wood everywhere — as if an entire forest had been chopped down. Much of it was legally exported by registered timber companies. But among the logs there was also timber bearing the tell-tale signs of having been hacked down by Wagner — evidence of a sanctioned organization running what is effectively a multinational criminal syndicate. A CAR official at the port told CBS News it was very easy to get timber from the Central African Republic through customs in Cameroon, calling it "a smooth process, with no delays." But we could not find any wood labeled as being exported by Bois Rouge, the front company that's been running the Wagner logging business in CAR. Instead, nearly 100 export documents obtained by CBS News from a Wagner convoy show a company called Wood International Group tasked with exporting the timber from Cameroon. After poring over the documents looking for anomalies, we finally spotted it: Wood International Group has exactly the same address and contact details as Bois Rouge. A deeper dive found that Wood International and Bois Rouge share the same company registration number. It's another Prigozhin subterfuge — changing the name of a front company to avoid detection. "This is, you know, one of the key elements of serious organized crime," said Otto, the analyst at the Geneva Centre. "In order to disguise one company, they use a proxy company." "The Department of State is engaging all countries who may be facilitating Wagner profiteering, knowingly or unknowingly," the official said, adding that the U.S. was "fully committed" to working with its partners in Africa and other nations to address the "destabilizing" activities of the Wagner Group. The official accused Prigozhin and Putin together of "actively undercutting the independence of our African partners." How much could Wagner rake in from CAR? CBS News has been told that Wagner is also mining diamonds in CAR. He appears to answer only to Putin, and our investigation suggests his hundreds of front companies are central to the Kremlin's strategy to win allies across the African continent, while grabbing their resources and finding new ways to evade crippling Western sanctions. It's worth noting that, despite the unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and many other nations since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow's gold reserves have increased over the last year, reaching an all-time high in the first quarter of 2023 according to their own figures. Wagner's business model is one it likely hopes to replicate across Africa, where there's no shortage of dodgy dictators eager to halt democratic resistance or fight off insurgencies. All the while, Prigozhin continues to evade sanctions and rake in the billions that fund both his rapidly expanding criminal empire, and his private army helping fight Russia's war in Ukraine. CBS News sought comment from the Wagner Group for this story, but had not received a reply by the time of publication.

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau arrives in South Korea to discuss trade, North Korean challenge

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrived in South Korea on Tuesday for a meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at which they are expected to discuss expansion of trade and challenges posed by North Korea. Trudeau, the first Canadian leader to visit South Korea in nine years, will meet with Yoon on Wednesday, hours after he delivers a speech at the National Assembly in Seoul. Yoon’s office said they will discuss North Korea’s dismal human rights record and cooperation over security and “critical minerals.” It was apparently referring to Canadian materials used by South Korean companies to manufacture electric car batteries or semiconductors, which are major products in South Korea’s export-driven economy. On Tuesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and Minister for Trade Ahn Duk-geun met with Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and Minster of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne to discuss economic security, Park’s ministry said. Yoon has been trying to increase international pressure on North Korea, which has been expanding its arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles, and strengthen Seoul’s voice in supply chain issues. He has also met this year with U.S. President Joe Biden and twice with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Yoon and Trudeau will travel later this week to Japan to attend the summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, where North Korea's nuclear threat is expected to be a key agenda item along with Russia’s war with Ukraine and China’s increasingly assertive foreign policy.

Wagner Mercs Threaten to Rape Lawmaker on Red Square

A video appeal circulated on Wagner-linked Telegram channels shows three masked fighters vowing revenge against lawmaker Viktor Sobolev. The other two men identify themselves as members of Wagner–one a regular mercenary, and one an ex-convict recruited by the group. “We want to tell lawmaker Sobolev–if you, motherfucker, stick your nose in, and Russia loses the war because of motherfuckers like you, we will have to come to Red Square to protect our people and fuck you and people like you in the ass. So fucking come here, you old fucker.” The threat comes after Sobolev, a member of the State Duma’s defense committee, vowed to have military draftees who join Wagner jailed for up to 15 years, calling the mercenary group an “illegal” military formation. Prigozhin reacted with outrage, cursing out Sobolev and challenging him to come to the frontline to “show what he’s capable of.” Though Prigozhin has been railing against military officials for months, his attacks have recently hit a fever pitch, with the Wagner founder publicly admitting in a video last week that the mercenary group was “wasting ammo” executing Russian troops who retreat from the battlefield. The Russian presidential administration is now said to be preparing a smear campaign to discredit the outspoken mercenary boss who seems to relish in making enemies.