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Nine people were killed and more than 40 injured when a fire set off explosions at a military ammunition depot in Chad’s capital.
Announcement of the death of former President Rawlings pic.twitter.com/7ext0fp4sd
— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) November 12, 2020
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The day after the violence—the worst since the revolution began in 2011—the interim military government named Hazem el-Beblawy, a respected economist who supported the ouster of Mubarak, as prime minister and said a new constitution would be drafted and elections would be held within six months. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, rejected both the apppointment of Beblawy and the timeframe for a return to a civilian government. Most members of the opposition, ranging from liberals to conservative Islamists, called the timeframe unrealistic and poorly planned. On July 16, an interim government took office. Its composed mostly of left-leaning technocrats and three Christians and two women were given posts. Notably, there are no Islamists in Beblawys cabinet. Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who organized the coup, was named deputy prime minister and retained his post as head of defense. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Nour party, which had backed the coup, rejected the new government. The government faces the overwhelming tasks of shoring up the economy, shepharding the country back to civilian rule, writing a new constitution, and holding elections within six months.
Sometimes the greatest inventions are those which simplify necessary tasks. Such is the case with Jan Matzeliger – the man who made it possible for ordinary citizens to purchase shoes.
Jan Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guiana (now known as Surinam) in South America. His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother was born in Dutch Guiana and was of African ancestry. His father had been sent to Surinam by the Dutch government to oversee the work going on in the South American country.
At an early age, Jan showed a remarkable ability to repair complex machinery and often did so when accompanying his father to a factory. When he turned 19, he decided to venture away from home to explore other parts of the world. For two years he worked aboard an East Indian merchant ship and was able to visit several countries. In 1873, Jan decided to stay in the United States for a while, landing in Pennsylvania. Although he spoke very little English, he was befriended by some Black residents who were active in a local church and took pity on him. Because he was good with his hands and mechanically inclined, he was able to get small jobs in order to earn a living.
At some point he began working for a cobbler and became interested in the making of shoes. At that time more than half of the shoes produced in the United States came from the small town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Still unable to speak more than rudimentary English, Matzeliger had a difficult time finding work in Lynn. After considerable time, he was able to begin working as a show apprentice in a shoe factory. He operated a McKay sole-sewing machine which was used to attached different parts of a shoe together. Unfortunately, no machines existed that could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole. As such, attaching the upper part of a shoe to the sole had to be done by hand. The people who were able to sew the parts of the shoe together were called “hand lasters” and expert ones
Eating dirt in Madagascar to escape famine
Victoria is the capital city of the Republic of Seychelles, a country made up of 115 small islands in the Indian Ocean of which 46 are uninhabited. It has been the nation’s capital since the country gained its independence in 1976. Victoria is the country’s largest city and the least populous African capital, with only 25,000 people in 2009. The city is located on the northeastern side of the 142-square-kilometer island of Mahé, the main island of the Seychelles. Although Seychelles is located about 1,500 kilometers away from the eastern coast of Africa and 925 kilometers away from Madagascar, it is still considered part of the African continent. The islands have a humid tropical climate with two seasons: a wet warm season from November to April, and a dry cool season from May to October.
The history of Seychelles and Victoria had its beginnings when early explorers and traders from Africa and Asia visited the islands. In 1502 the first Europeans to most likely see the islands sailed with Portuguese Admiral Vasco de Gama during his exploration of the African continent and Indian Ocean basin. In 1756, at the early site of present day Victoria, Captain Corneille Nicolas Morphy claimed the islands as a possession of the French crown. The islands were named after Jean Moreau de Sechelles, King Louis XV’s Minister of Finance. The town and surrounding islands were formally colonized in 1772 by the French. Great Britain eventually gained control of the islands in 1810 as a consequence of the Treaty of Paris.
Both the British and French used enslaved Africans to work on their plantations on the islands. After slavery was banned in 1835 the British imported Indians to work the land as indentured laborers. In 1841 the British named the town Victoria after the British Queen Victoria. Seychelles gained its independence in 1976 from Great Britain, and Victoria became the capital of the country.
Victoria is the country’s commercial, shipping, and tourist center. Constructed to help accommodate larger ships and increase
Angola, more than three times the size of California, extends for more than 1,000 mi (1,609 km) along the South Atlantic in southwest Africa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo are to the north and east, Zambia is to the east, and Namibia is to the south. A plateau averaging 6,000 ft (1,829 m) above sea level rises abruptly from the coastal lowlands. Nearly all the land is desert or savanna, with hardwood forests in the northeast.
Angola underwent a transition from a one-party socialist state to a nominally multiparty democracy in 1992.
The original inhabitants of Angola are thought to have been Khoisan speakers. After 1000, large numbers of Bantu speakers migrated to the region and became the dominant group. Angola derives its name from the Bantu kingdom of Ndongo, whose name for its king is ngola.
Explored by the Portuguese navigator Diego Cão in 1482, Angola became a link in trade with India and Southeast Asia. Later it was a major source of slaves for Portugals New World colony of Brazil. Development of the interior began after the Berlin Conference in 1885 fixed the colonys borders, and British and Portuguese investment fostered mining, railways, and agriculture.
Following World War II, independence movements began but were sternly suppressed by Portuguese military forces. The major nationalist organizations were the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a Marxist party; National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA); and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). After 14 years of war, Portugal finally granted independence to Angola in 1975. The MPLA, which had led the independence movement, has controlled the government ever since. But no period of peace followed Angolas long war for independence. UNITA disputed the MPLAs ascendancy, and civil war broke out almost immediately. With the Soviet Union and Cuba supporting the Marxist MPLA, and the United States and South Africa supporting the anti-Communist UNITA, the country became a
Another 434 people have died of illness linked to the virus.
African Americans throughout the North held meetings and church services on January 1, 1863 to celebrate the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Almost always the festivities revolved around a central speaker. One of those speeches was delivered by Rev. Jonathan C. Gibbs, pastor of the First African Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Gibbs studied at Dartmouth and Princeton Theological Seminary before assuming his pastorate and was active in the Underground Railroad and black convention movement in the 1850s. After the war, he served as a missionary to freedmen and women in North Carolina and Florida and as Floridas secretary of state, acting governor, and superintendent of public instruction. Rev. Gibbs’s speech appears below.
THE MORNING DAWNS! The long night of sorrow and gloom is past, rosy-fingered Aurora, early born of day, shows the first faint flush of her coming glory, low down on the distant horizon of Freedoms joyful day. O day, thrice blessed, that brings liberty to four million native-born Americans. O Liberty! O sacred rights of every human soul! O source of knowledge, of justice, of civilization, of Christianity, of strength, of power, bless us with the inspiration of thy presence. Today, standing on the broad platform of the common brotherhood of men, we solemnly appeal to the God of justice, our common Father, to aid us to meet manfully the new duties, the new obligations that this memorable day will surely impose. The Proclamation has gone forth, and God is saying to this nation by its legitimate constitute head, Man must be free.
Scout, deride, malign this intimation, as the enemies of God and man will and may, the American people must yield to His inscrutable fiat, or the legacy of their fathers will be squandered midst poverty, ignorance, blood and shame. The people must support this Proclamation, heartily, earnestly, strengthening the hands of our government by all the energies and resources they possess, or in a short time the question will not be whether black men are to be
Editor OilPrice.com October 20, 2020
While the deeply impoverished South American country of Guyana is attracting the lion’s share of attention when it comes to oil, it is neighbouring Suriname where the next major petroleum discovery could occur.
The article There is nothing that can stop the world’s next oil hotspot appeared first on Stabroek News.
On this day, Ghana becomes a free self-governing nation. This country will be the first of the British Commonwealth of Nations to be self-governing.
St. Vincent, chief island of the chain, is 18 mi (29 km) long and 11 mi (18 km) wide and is located 100 mi (161 km) west of Barbados. The island is mountainous and well forested. St. Vincent is dominated by the volcano Mount Soufrière, which rises to 4,048 ft (1,234 m). The Grenadines, a chain of nearly 600 islets with a total area of only 17 sq mi (27 sq km), extend for 60 mi (96 km) between St. Vincent and Grenada. The main islands in the Grenadines are Bequia, Balliceau, Canouan, Mayreau, Mustique, Isle DQuatre, Petit Saint Vincent, and Union Island.
Parliamentary democracy.
The Carib Indians inhabited St. Vincent before the Europeans arrived, and the island still sports a sizable number of Carib artifacts. Explored by Columbus in 1498, and alternately claimed by Britain and France, St. Vincent became a British colony by the Treaty of Paris in 1763. In 1773, the island was divided between the Caribs and the British, but conflicts between the groups persisted. In 1776, the Caribs revolted and were subdued. Thereafter the British deported most of them to islands in the Gulf of Honduras. Sugarcane cultivation brought thousands of African slaves and, later, Portuguese and East Indian laborers.
The islands belonged to the West Indies Federation from 1958 until its dissolution in 1962, won home rule in 1969 as part of the West Indies Associated States, and achieved full independence Oct. 27, 1979. Prime Minister Milton Catos government quelled a brief rebellion on Dec. 8, 1979, attributed to economic problems following the eruption of Mount Soufrière in April 1979 (which had caused the evacuation of the northern two-thirds of the island). The eruption, followed by Hurricane Allen in 1980, seriously damaged the nations economy, particularly the important banana crop, in the 1980s. But by the 1990s the economy had begun to rebound. With the 1999 decision by the European Union to end its preferential treatment of bananas imported from former colonies, St. Vincent sought to diversify its economy, primarily through
Coup attempts in June 2003 and Aug. 2004 were thwarted. Tayas crackdown on Islamists and his support for Israel and the U.S. were believed to have sparked the attempts to overthrow him. In Aug. 2005, however, President Taya was deposed by military officers while out of the country. In June 2006, voters approved to limit the presidency to two five-year terms.
Mauritania started its march toward democracy in November 2006, when local and regional elections were held throughout the country. Presidential elections followed in March 2007. None of the 19 candidates won more than 50% of the vote in the first round, and the two top candidates, Sidi Ould Sheik Abdellahi, a former government minister, and Ahmed Ould Daddah, an opposition leader, faced off in the countrys first-ever second round of voting. Abdellahi prevailed in the runoff to become the countrys first democratically elected president.
In July 2008, the countrys top four military leaders deposed Prime Minister Boubacar and President Abdellahi in a bloodless coup. Some of the same military leaders were involved in the 2005 coup that brought Abdellahi to power. In recent months, the countrys legislature has criticized Abdellahis handling of rising food prices and accused the government of corruption.
In July 2009, a year after taking control of Mauritania in a military coup, Muhammad Ould Abdel Aziz won the presidential election, with 52% of the vote. He prevailed over parliament speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, who garnered only 16%. The election was deemed fair by outside observers, including representatives from the African Union. The election helped to put the country back on a course toward democracy.
When President Abdel Aziz took office on August 5, 2009, Prime Minister Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf resigned. Laghdaf had been retained two months earlier to serve as prime minster as part of a deal with the opposition. Despite his resignation, Laghdaf was reappointed prime minister by President Abdel Aziz in mid-August 2009. On Feb. 2, 2014, Prime
Hugh M. Browne, educator, Presbyterian minister, and college professor in Liberia, positioned himself between the advocates of industrial and higher education for African Americans. In the speech below he describes his educational philosophy and the forces and experiences that shaped it.
In my invitation to take part in the discussion of the higher education of the colored people of the South, your Vice-President indicated that the fact that I had lived in Liberia would enable me to speak as one having authority. I am not sure that I understand just what Dr. Wayland meant by this hint,-whether he wished me to give an account of Liberia, the republic which began with an imported college, and has not yet established a common school; nor been able, although maintained financially by friends in the United States, to prevent this college from falling into the condition which Mr. Cleveland calls innocuous desuetude,---or whether, possessing himself a knowledge of the retrograding effects of higher education upon that republic, he predicates there from the position which I shall take in this discussion. If the latter, he is perfectly right. No man whose judgement is worth accepting can live one week in Liberia without becoming a radical advocate of the now celebrated ratio of 16 to 1,-not between gold and silver money, for Liberia has neither, but between higher and industrial education. I mean that, in the matter of the education of my people, one part of industrial is worth, in weight, volume, and potential energy, sixteen parts of the best literary or higher education the world has ever seen. After much thought and prayerful consideration, I have arrived at the conclusion that the Great Creator has permitted the foundation and existence of Liberia in order to give to the world a striking and forcible object-lesson on the folly of attempting to prepare an undeveloped race for the ceaseless and inevitable struggle and competition of life by higher education.
In the time allotted, it is impossible to enter into
