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Afghanistan should sign U.S. security deal, presidential candidate and former foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul tells Amanpour
By Mick Krever, CNN
Afghanistan should sign an agreement that would keep some U.S. troops in the country after 2014, Afghan presidential candidate Zalmai Rassoul told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
“I hope and I'm confident that the zero option will not be an option,” Rassoul said. Leaving no U.S troops after 2014 is “not a good option for Afghanistan and therefore for the United States,” he said.
Rassoul, an establishment figure and former foreign minister, did not directly criticize President Hamid Karzai, who has refused to sign such a deal.
Afghanistan’s Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, has endorsed the security deal.
The Obama administration announced earlier this week that it had warned Afghanistan that it has started planning for a possible withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of the year if no security agreement is signed.
Rassoul said that he did not believe Afghanistan was at risk of breaking out into civil war, and that the Afghan national security forces are “well trained” and “ready to defend Afghanistan.”
Nonetheless, he admitted that they are “not yet well equipped.”
“They are suffering from that. They need better equipment, training and advice.”
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on climate change
In this web extra, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks with CNN's Christiane Amanpour about climate change.
Amanpour's full interview with deGrasse Tyson will be online Friday.
Two years after Trayvon Martin killing, human rights lawyer says America ‘burdened with a legacy of slavery’
By Mick Krever, CNN
Two years ago Wednesday, a black teenager named Trayvon Martin became the latest face of what many called racial injustice in America.
Martin was unarmed, except with a hoodie, when he was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida.
The assailant, George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, claimed self-defense. A jury agreed, pronouncing him not guilty.
Of course Trayvon's case was hardly the first or the last such tragedy.
Just two weeks ago, again in Florida, a similar situation: a white man escaped the most serious charge of first degree murder after he shot and killed a black teenager in a dispute over loud music, of all things. Michael Dunn was convicted on three charges of attempted second-degree murder for shooting into the SUV holding the victim and other black teenagers.
The cases “reflect a continuing disregard for valuing people of color in the way that we have to if we’re going to recover from our history inequality and racial injustice,” Bryan Stevenson, a human rights lawyer and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“This country is burdened with a legacy of slavery. We enslaved Africans for over two centuries. From the end of reconstruction until World War II we terrorized and traumatized black people in America with lynchings and violence and racial hatred.”
“And because we never told the truth about all of those problems and all the difficulties that created, we never had the moment of truth and reconciliation that every country requires if it’s going to deal with decades of human rights abuse. We didn’t have what South Africa went through.”
Venezuela opposition lawmaker: ‘government has to choose’
Venezuela is in the throes of the biggest protests since the death of President Hugo Chavez a year ago.
People are outraged in the oil-rich country at record inflation, shortages of basic goods, and high crime rates.
Thirteen people have been killed since the demonstrations began.
CNN’S Christiane Amanpour spoke on Wednesday with Maria Corina Machado, an opposition member of parliament.
“The government has to choose: They make changes, profound changes, or they decided to repress,” Machado said from Caracas. “And what they have decided is the second part. They decided to a brutal repression in order to stop this civic movement.”
Click above to see Amanpour’s full conversation with Machado.
Putin phone call convinced Yanukovych to change attitude, says Polish foreign minister
By Mick Krever, CNN
A phone call between former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been the deciding factor in the Ukrainian leader changing his "attitude" towards the protests in Kiev, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
Sikorski was intimately involved in the negotiations that brought a truce between Yanukovych and the Ukrainian opposition, and gave Amanpour an insider’s view of the talks.
“President Yanukovych left us several times to talk to [U.S.] Vice President Biden, [German] Chancellor Merkel, and indeed President Putin,” Sikorski said. “One of the breakthroughs was when we said, ‘Well look, Mr. President, you have to declare to the opposition by when you agree for new presidential elections to be held, by when do you intend to shorten your term of office.’”
“He was very reluctant, as you might imagine,” Sikorski said. “His attitude changed after one of the conversations, we think, with President Putin.”
Polish FM on Ukraine future
CNN's Christiane Amanpour speaks with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski about Ukraine's future.
The end of innocence: Photojournalist documents child sexual abuse
By Mick Krever, CNN
It is hard to imagine – a three-year-old girl being raped. It is even harder to fathom the rapists being children themselves.
But in South Africa, not only is this crime shockingly common, it may be on the rise.
45% of rapes reported to the police in South Africa are child rapes, and 50% of South Africa’s children will be abused before the age of 18, according to South Africa’s Tears Foundation and the Medical Research Council.
For over a decade, photographer Mariella Furrer has worked to document these crimes with powerful photos and accompanying narratives.
She has compiled her work into a nearly 700-page book, “My Piece of Sky.”
Click here to see Furrer’s photos in large format
“Most child sexual abuse is unreported,” she told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday. “The most important thing about this body of work really is to try to get people to speak out about their abuse – to have the courage to speak out about it, because there’s a lot of shame and guilt attached to it.”
Putin has no reason to interfere in Ukraine, says former Kremlin adviser
By Mick Krever, CNN
Russian President Vladimir Putin has no incentive to interfere militarily in Ukraine and cannot be blamed for “inflaming the situation” that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, former Kremlin adviser Alexander Nekrassov told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“Why would Putin want to have instability in Ukraine, which is bordering Russia?”
“The infighting has started” in the new interim government, Nekrassov said. “It will continue.”
Nekrassov worked for President Boris Yeltsin during the massive upheaval of the 90s, and more recently he's been an advisor to the Russian Government on closer ties with the west.
Ukraine remains in the grip of crisis three days after a popular uprising drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
The opposition has again delayed naming a new interim government after pledging to do so Tuesday.
There are discouraging reports of political disarray and parliamentary squabbling, and the ousted president is still missing.
Yanukovych “had only one year left in office,” Nekrassov said. “He would have probably lost that election. Why was there need for sudden change of power?”
“You know, President Hollande of France is even less popular. We don’t call on him to be removed.”
Yanukovych, more popular than Hollande?
Former Kremlin Adviser Alexander Nekrassov tells CNN's Christiane Amanpour being unpopular is no reason to be ousted.
Ukrainian member of parliament ready to work with her allies to unite country
By Mick Krever, CNN
The former Ukrainian opposition is “ready to the unite a country,” Member of Parliament Lesya Orobets told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday from Kiev.
“We Ukrainians do not feel scared with the unrealistic tasks,” Orobets said. “Three months ago no one could have told that such Maidan can happen, and that [the] Yanukovych regime will be over.”
Ukraine remains in the grip of crisis three days after a popular uprising drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
The opposition has again delayed naming a new interim government after pledging to do so Tuesday.
There are discouraging reports of political disarray and parliamentary squabbling, and the ousted president is still missing.
For the first time, Orobets said, Ukraine is “transparently” discussing a new government “before it is actually appointed or elected.”
End of innocence: Photos of child sexual abuse in South Africa
Rape is notoriously prevalent in South Africa, but the greatest increase in sexual crimes there has been against infants and children under the age of seven.
Photographer Mariella Furrer has been documenting this shocking story for over a decade, and has compiled her powerful photographs into a new book, "My Piece of Sky."
Furrer spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday about her work; their conversation will be online on Wednesday.
Click here to see Furrer's photos in large format.
How American evangelicals may be responsible for Uganda’s anti-gay law
While Ugandan President Museveni accuses the United States of trying to import social imperialism into Uganda by defending homosexual rights, who do you think is behind some of the anti-gay hysteria in Uganda right now?
A group of evangelical Christians from that very same hotbed of social imperialism: the United States of America.
Museveni on Monday signed into law a bill that toughens penalties against gay people and defines some homosexual acts as crimes punishable by life in prison.
Roger Ross Williams belonged to an organization called International House of Prayer in Missouri, whose missionary zeal fell on gays in Uganda. He decided to make a film about what he learned called “God Loves Uganda.”
Someone like evangelist Scott Lively is “an extremist in America,” Williams said, “but when he goes to Uganda he gets taken seriously because of what he represents.”
“He’s an American evangelical, and what an American represents in a place like Uganda – it represents power and wealth.”
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