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After a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28. 2025, the country’s military and the myriad resistance groups fighting a yearslong civil war faced international calls for an immediate ceasefire. A pause in
The post Myanmar Military’s ‘Ceasefire’ Follows a Pattern of Ruling Generals Exploiting Disasters to Shore Up Control first appeared on Greater Diversity News.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
The content originally appeared on: CNN Myanmar's deposed civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, faces two years in jail after her sentence was halved by the country's military, state media MRTV reported on Monday.
In March 2012, President Touré was overthrown in a coup by mutineering soldiers who said they were acting in response to the governments response to the rebellion by the Tuaregs, nomadic insurgents of Berber and Arab descent who live in the north. The troops said they did not received adequate support from the government. Many of the Tuaregs had fought for Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and returned to Mali after his downfall, emboldened and armed with weapons. The rebels scored a number of victories, taking over towns and demoralizing the countrys military. The soldiers looted the presidential palace, suspended the constitution, and implemented a curfew. The coup did not impede the rebels. In fact, days after the coup, the rebels seized the city of Timbuktu, and thus gained control over much of the northern part of the country. They declared a cease-fire on April 5. The next day, however, the rebels said they had seceded from Mali and formed an independent state, called Azawad.
The Economic Community of West African States, a regional trade organization, imposed sanctions on the country, froze the assets Mali held in its bank, and sealed their borders with Mali. Mali had been considered one of the most stable democracies in Africa, and presidential elections had been set for April. President Touré said he planned to honor the countrys term limits and not seek reelection.
In a deal negotiated by ECOWAS in April, coup leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo agreed to step down, ousted president Touré resigned, and former parliament speaker Dioncounda Traoré was sworn in as interim president. Cheick Modibo Diarra, an astrophysicist who had worked at NASA, was named interim prime minister. Traoré vowed to confront the rebels and hold elections, but did not give a timetable for the vote. Days later, however, several members of the opposition were arrested by the military, which suggested the junta was still clinging to power. Concern about Sanogos refusal to relinquish power played out on May 21 when pro-military
Malaysian immigration authorities raided apartment buildings in Petaling Jaya Old Town on Wednesday morning, arresting about 200 people who had emigrated to the southeast Asian country.
All 200 arrestees were tested for COVID-19, according to Immigration Department director-general Datuk Khairul Dzaimee Daud.
Some Malaysians particularly oppose the presence of Rohingya refugees in their country, fearing they might bring COVID-19 when they emigrate.
Petaling Jaya Old Town’s quarantine, ordered when 26 COVID-19 cases were confirmed there, will be lifted Thursday morning.
The post VIDEO: Malaysian Immigration Police Raid Apartments during COVID-19, arrest 200 appeared first on Zenger News.
A 4.2 magnitude earthquake occurred southwest of Barbados this morning, the UWI Seismic Research Centre said. The earthquake occurred at 6:52 am at a depth of 10 kilometres. It was located 51.0 km SW of Bridgetown, Barbados, 160.0 km ESE of Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and 191.0 km SE of Castries, Saint Lucia.
The post 4.2 magnitude earthquake southwest of Barbados appeared first on Barbados Today.
Mario Antonio Palacios, a 43-year-old Colombian man who was allegedly involved in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse last year, has been arrested in the United States. According to CBS News, the Department of Justice made the announcement on Tuesday, alleging that Palacios and others entered the presidential residence in Port-au-Prince on July 7 with the \"intent and purpose of killing President Moïse.\" The DOJ said Palacios is now charged with \"conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the U.S. and providing material support resulting in death, knowing or intending that such material support would be used to prepare for or carry out the conspiracy to kill or kidnap.\" According to the DOJ, Palacios fled Haiti and went to Jamaica following the assassination, but he agreed to travel to the U.S. after being deported from the island. Palacios, who is now in custody, could face life in prison if he is convicted. About 20 other Colombian citizens and a group of...
Residents of the Western Cape were given a rude awakening early on Tuesday as an earthquake with a 3.4 to 3.5 magnitude struck at a depth of 5km about 47km from Saldanha.
In 1977, career diplomat Maurice D. Bean was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Burma (in 1989 the military government changed the name of the country to Myanmar). Bean was born on September 9, 1928, in Gary, Indiana. His father Everett worked as a laborer for the U.S. Steel Corporation; his mother Vera was a housewife.
Bean attended racially segregated schools in Gary and graduated from Howard University in 1950 with a B.A. in Government. A year later, Bean’s career in the U.S. Foreign Service began when he was assigned to work with the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) in Indonesia. From 1951 to 1956, he served in Djakarta, the nation’s capital, as clerk, assistant program officer, and program analyst for the ECA.
Bean also continued his training, graduating from Haverford College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1954 with a Master’s Degree in Social and Technical Assistance. Five years later (1959), Bean received a postgraduate certificate in Advanced International Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The certificate came while he served as an ECA operations and programs officer in Bangkok, Thailand (1956-1961).
In 1961 Bean joined the newly formed U.S. Peace Corps and worked in Manila, the Philippines until 1966. Bean served first as the Corps Operations Officer (1961-1963), then Deputy Regional Director (1963-1964), and finally Operations Director (1964-1966).
In 1966 Bean rejoined the State Department as a director within the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs for Malaysia and Singapore. Bean’s mission ended in 1970, the year he came back stateside to participate in the nine-month Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy.
In 1971 he was assigned as U.S. Consul in Ibadan, Nigeria, serving there until 1973. From 1973 to 1976 he was Deputy Chief of Mission and Senior Foreign Service Inspector in Monrovia, Liberia. While stationed in Ibadan, Bean in 1972 married Dolores J. Winston.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Bean to become
A 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia's main Java island on 10 April, as the country reels from a cyclone disaster.
[DW] Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said the government will launch more military attacks on the Tigray region. His announcement comes amid international calls for an end to hostilities.
In June 1940, as fighting was winding down in France, the pace of operations quickened in the Mediterranean. The area was vital for Britain, which needed to maintain access to the Suez Canal in order to remain in close contact with the rest of its empire. Following Italys declaration of war on Britain and France, Italian troops quickly seized British Somaliland in the Horn of Africa and laid siege to the island of Malta.
They also began a series of probing attacks from Libya into British-held Egypt.
That fall, British forces went on the offensive against the Italians. On November 12, aircraft flying from HMS Illustrious struck the Italian naval base at Taranto, sinking a battleship and damaging two others. During the attack, the British only lost two aircraft. In North Africa, General Archibald Wavell launched a major attack in December, Operation Compass, which drove the Italians out of Egypt and captured over 100,000 prisoners. The following month, Wavell dispatched troops south and cleared the Italians from the Horn of Africa.
Concerned by Italian leader Benito Mussolinis lack of progress in Africa and the Balkans, Adolf Hitler authorized German troops to enter the region to assist their ally in February 1941. Despite a naval victory over the Italians at the Battle of Cape Matapan (March 27-29, 1941), the British position in the region was weakening.
With British troops sent north from Africa to aid Greece, Wavell was unable to stop a new German offensive in North Africa and was driven back out of Libya by General Erwin Rommel. By the end of May, both Greece and Crete had also fallen to German forces.
On June 15, Wavell sought to regain the momentum in North Africa and launched Operation Battleaxe.
Designed to push the German Afrika Korps out of Eastern Cyrenaica and relieve the besieged British troops at Tobruk, the operation was a total failure as Wavells attacks were broken on the German defenses. Angered by Wavells lack of success, Prime Minister Winston Churchill removed him and assigned General
By CARA ANNA Associated Press NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia's situation is 'spiraling out of control with appalling impact on civilians' and urgently needs outside monitoring, the United Nations human rights chief warned Wednesday, but Ethiopia is rejecting calls for independent investigations into the deadly fighting in its Tigray region, saying it 'doesn't need a baby-sitter.' The government's declaration came amid international calls for more transparency into the month-long fighting between Ethiopian forces and those of the fugitive Tigray regional government that is thought to have killed thousands, including civilians. At least one large-scale massacre has been documented by human […]
The post UN: Ethiopia's conflict has 'appalling impact on civilians' appeared first on Black News Channel.
[Citizen] Dar es Salaam -- An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.7 struck off the Mara region, the Regional Commissioner has confirmed.
Despite supporting an embargo, Germany has exported €330 million in weapons to countries involved in the war in Libya.
Since hosting a Libya summit four months ago, the German government has approved arms exports worth €331 million ($358 million) to countries accused of supporting warring parties in the country, according a report from the German Economy Ministry seen by news agency DPA.
In January, Germany hosted a summit of world leaders whose countries have sent arms or soldiers to Libya.
In a closing declaration, 16 countries and international organisations agreed to a weapons embargo for Libya.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres later accused these four countries of breaching the embargo and continuing to provide arms for the conflict.
More than a million African soldiers served in colonial armies in World War II.
May 8, 1945, marks the 75th anniversary of the surrender of the German armed forces and the end of the Second World War in Europe.
More than a million Africans served as combatants as well as war workers and carriers in World War II for the colonial powers - more than half enlisted by Britain with the rest serving France and Belgium.
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Allied landing in Provence in southern France, President Emmanuel Macron expressed gratitude for the contribution of African soldiers in defeating the German forces occupying France.
Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, himself a former colonial soldier, put it like this in a 2015 interview with DW: \"In war, we saw the white men naked and we have not forgotten that picture.\"
Press Release - Millions of letters, emails and texts will be sent to support people who have been jailed, attacked or disappeared
Gambia’s renowned justice minister Abubacarr Tambadou, who established a probe to investigate abuses under the country’s ex-dictator and spearheaded the international defence of Myanmar’s Rohingya, has resigned, the government said Thursday.
Appointed justice minister in 2017, Tambadou was instrumental in setting up The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, designed to investigate abuses committed under the country’s former dictator, Yahya Jammeh.
We didn't always agree with Tambadou, but he always listened to human rights advocates and especially to Yahya Jammeh's victims.
On Thursday, President Barrow’s office released a statement praising Tambadou’s “patriotic and selfless service” as justice minister, and for helping restore The Gambia’s international image.
“We didn’t always agree with Tambadou, but he always listened to human rights advocates and especially to Yahya Jammeh’s victims,” Brody said.
Nigerian nationalism asserts that Nigerians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Nigerians.[1] [2] Nigerian nationalism is a territorial nationalism, emphasizing a cultural connection of the people to the land — in particular the Niger and Benue rivers.[3] It first emerged in the 1920s under the influence of Herbert Macaulay who is considered the founder of Nigerian nationalism.[4] It was founded because of the belief in the necessity for the people living in the British colony of Nigeria of multiple backgrounds to unite as one people in order to be able to resist colonialism.[5] [6] The Nigerian nationalists goal of achieving an independent sovereign state of Nigeria was achieved in 1960 when Nigeria declared its independence and British colonial rule ended.[1] Nigerias government has sought to unify the various peoples and regions of Nigeria since the countrys independence in 1960.[1]
Nigerian nationalism has been negatively affected by multiple historical episodes of ethnic violence and repression of certain ethnic groups by the Nigerian government between the various peoples has resulted in multiple secessionist movements demanding independence from Nigeria.[1] However aside from instances of extremism, most Nigerians continue to peacefully coexist with each other, and a common Nigerian identity has been fostered amongst the more-educated and affluent Nigerians as well as amongst the many Nigerians who leave small homogeneous ethnic communities to seek economic opportunities in the cities where the population is ethnically mixed.[7] For instance many southerners migrate to the north to trade or work while a number of northerner seasonal workers and small-scale entrepreneurs go to the south.[8]
Herbert Macaulay became a very public figure in Nigeria, and on June 24, 1923, he founded the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), the first Nigerian political party.[9] The NNDP won all the seats in the elections of 1923, 1928 and 1933.[9] In the 1930s, Macaulay took part in organizing Nigerian
The coronavirus could infect a quarter of a billion Africans and put intolerable pressure on the continent's fragile health system, a new report said Friday, as the pandemic's global death toll topped 300,000.
Despite fears of a second wave of infections, borders began opening up in Europe and lockdowns continued to ease as governments try to get stalled economies moving again, with experts warning world output could shrink by 10 percent.
With large populations living in slums, social distancing is all but impossible for many on the continent, and health experts say only a vaccine will prevent widespread infection.
The US and China are the world's two largest economies, doing hundreds of billions of dollars of mutually beneficial trade every year.
The Asian Development Bank on Friday doubled its previous estimate of the cost of the pandemic, saying the world economy would shrink by $8.8 trillion -- almost a tenth of global output.
[RFI] A number of high-ranking members of Omar al Bashir's now-dissolved National Congress party (NCP), including its former leader, Ibrahim Gandour, were released by military authorities as demonstrators continued to take to the streets to protest the military coup.
The UN refugee agency says the number of asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees worldwide shot up by nearly nine million people last year – the biggest rise in its records.
UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi said of the 79.5 million people forcibly displaced, 68% come from only five countries: Myanmar, Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan and Venezuela.
The surge was chalked up in part to a new way of counting people displaced from Venezuela and “worrying” new displacement in the persistent trouble spots of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sahel region of Africa, Yemen and Syria.
While the total figure of people facing forced displacement rose from 70.8 million at the end of 2018, some 11 million people were “newly displaced” last year, with poorer countries among those most affected.
Grandi said the global pandemic had had a major impact on refugees and the displaced, as 164 countries either partially or totally closed their borders to fight the new coronavirus.
Electoral authorities in Guinea on Saturday declared President Alpha Conde winner of Sunday's election with 59.49% of the vote, defeating his main rival Cellou Diallo.
\t Some people went to the streets to protest immediately after the announcement. Such demonstrations have occurred for months after the government changed the constitution through a national referendum, allowing Conde to extend his decade in power.
\t Opposition candidate Cellou Diallo received 33.50% of the vote, the electoral commission said. Voter turnout was almost 80%.
\t Political tensions in the West African nation turned violent in recent days after Diallo claimed victory ahead of the official results. Celebrations by his supporters were suppressed when security forces fired tear gas to disperse them.
They accuse the electoral authorities of rigging the vote for incumbent president Alpha Conde.
\t At least nine people have been killed since the election, according to the government. The violence sparked international condemnation by the U.S. and others.
\t ``Today is a sad day for African democracy,'' said Sally Bilaly Sow, a Guinean blogger and activist living abroad. The government should take into account the will of the people who have a desire for change, he said.
ICC warning
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor warned on Friday that warring factions in Guinea could be prosecuted after fighting erupted.
“I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages and contributes in any other way to crimes … is liable to prosecution either by the Guinean courts or the ICC,” she said.
#ICC Prosecutor #FatouBensouda: "I wish to repeat this important reminder: anyone who commits, orders, incites, encourages or contributes, in any other way, to the commission of #RomeStatute crimes, is liable to prosecution either by #Guinean courts or by the #ICC."
— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) October 23, 2020
U.S. Department of State Background Note
A wide variety of ethnic groups live in The Gambia with a minimum of intertribal friction, each preserving its own language and traditions. The Mandinka tribe is the largest, followed by the Fula, Wolof, Jola, and Serahule. Approximately 3,500 non-Africans live in The Gambia, including Europeans and families of Lebanese origin.
Muslims constitute more than 95% of the population. Christians of different denominations account for most of the remainder. Gambians officially observe the holidays of both religions and practice religious tolerance.
More than 63% of Gambians live in rural villages (1993 census), although more and more young people come to the capital in search of work and education. Provisional figures from the 2003 census show that the gap between the urban and rural populations is narrowing as more areas are declared urban. While urban migration, development projects, and modernization are bringing more Gambians into contact with Western habits and values, the traditional emphasis on the extended family, as well as indigenous forms of dress and celebration, remain integral parts of everyday life.
The Gambia was once part of the Empire of Ghana and the Kingdom of the Songhais. The first written accounts of the region come from records of Arab traders in the 9th and 10th centuries A.D. Arab traders established the trans-Saharan trade route for slaves, gold, and ivory. In the 15th century, the Portuguese took over this trade using maritime routes. At that time, The Gambia was part of the Kingdom of Mali.
In 1588, the claimant to the Portuguese throne, Antonio, Prior of Crato, sold exclusive trade rights on The Gambia River to English merchants; this grant was confirmed by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I. In 1618, King James I granted a charter to a British company for trade with The Gambia and the Gold Coast (now Ghana).
During the late 17th century and throughout the 18th, England and France struggled continuously for political and commercial supremacy in
