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In Chad, opposition parties do not recognise the newly declared transitional council and warn France to not meddle in the nation's political affairs.
\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.
Analysis - The main task will be delivering an effective new structure that tackles internal dysfunction at the commission.
LOS ANGELES – Several Black activists are demanding that local officials withdraw their support of embattled District Attorney Jackie Lacey or face mass protests and political opposition during their own election campaigns this fall. Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope and Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, who held a Read More...
The post Activists demand that local officials drop support for Lacey appeared first on .
Main opposition parties in the Oromia region – Abiy’s home region – have kicked against the HoF decision calling it a unilateral and illegal extension of the term of government.
“A political consensus whereby the views of the opposition political parties were taken into consideration and a climate of trust and fruitful collaboration was promoted would have been more likely to create an environment where the promised peaceful and comprehensive democratic transformation of Ethiopia would have been possible,” their statement read in part.
He has serially insisted that he did not fear elections and was ready to hand over power if he loses
\tThe Council of Constitutional Inquiry held public hearings last month on possible next steps, though critics said these were insufficiently inclusive of opposition voices.
Dawud Ibsa, chairman of the opposition Oromo Liberation Front, told AFP Wednesday that the House of Federation vote “does not have any constitutional basis”.
If major opposition parties reject the recommendations from the Council of Constitutional Inquiry, “protests or election boycotts could become a reality, reducing the chances of successful competitive polls in 2021,” said William Davison of the International Crisis Group (ICG), a conflict-prevention organisation.
[State Department] Moderator: Good afternoon to everyone from the U.S. Department of State's Africa Regional Media Hub. I would like to welcome our participants from across the continent and thank all of you for participating in this discussion.
Opinion - Operation Barkhane has never been this unpopular. A poll conducted in early January 2021 by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) revealed that 51% of France's population no longer support the military intervention in the Sahel. This is the lowest backing it's had since it started eight years ago.
The niece of President Donald Trump wrote a tell-all book about the president and his family that reveals that Trump paid someone to take the SATs for him. Titled Too
[RFI] French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a summit in May to review the way Western countries fund African economies, saying that investments were often high-risk, making African nations more inclined to turn to China than the West.
As Rwanda maks the 27th anniversary of the start of the 1994 Tutsi genocide, the recent publication of a report on the role France played in the tragedy could help normalise ties between the two countries.
TEXAS, United States (AP) United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees nearly half its US staff they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the novel coronavirus pandemic is hurting the airline industry.The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the US and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travellers.
Ethiopian opposition party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), has accused Prime minister Abiy Ahmed and his government of being in chaos and trying to thrive in chaos.
“It has become fashionable to blame TPLF for everything that goes wrong in the country,” Getachew Reda, a TPLF spokesman told the BBC denying that the front had any hand and or interest in the killing of Oromo entertainer Hachalu Hundessa early last week.
In a six page document titled “Context and Updates of Current Issues in Ethiopia,” the PM’s office cited two main factors for the assassination and subsequent deadly protests and mass arrests.
The document said “Unabated attempt made by aggrieved forces to perpetuate political tensions and increasing political polarization and the negative role of media in creating ethnic tensions;” were at the heart of the issues.
“It’s a flat-out lie,” Reda told the BBC stressing that the TPLF “doesn’t believe in eliminating individuals to make political scores.” The PM’s statement did not specifically mention TPLF but made inferences to them.
The paragraph that seemed to be pointing at the TPLF read: “... it should be mentioned here that the government is under constant and unrestrained pressure from disgruntled forces, organizing and supporting anti-peace elements, by using the economic and political muscles they have built over the last three decades, in order to undermine this inevitable reform process.”
Escalating war of words between PM Abiy administration and TPLF extremely dangerous, irresponsible.
Strategy of demonising TPLF deflects some of the Oromo anger but risks deepening sense of siege, victimhood in Tigray Region and stoke, potentially, new armed conflict.— Rashid Abdi (@RAbdiCG) July 10, 2020
Aside the TPLF, the governing party had also accused former Oromo rebel group of being behind the shooting of Hachalu Hundessa. Amid high security deployment, Addis Ababa and Oromia regional state remains peaceful according to reports.
Ethiopia is in the tenth day of an internet blackout that was effected the morning after the musician was killed. It is the longest blockade since Abiy came to power. A spokeswoman has defended the move.
“... if the internet is being used by certain forces to spread hate speech and vitriol, that is perpetuating and initiating ethnic, religious and communal violence, then ensuring human security supersedes,” Billene Aster Syoum told the BBC.
Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced on Tuesday that he would hold talks on establishing a new unity government, after weeks of escalating criticism from the country’s political opposition.
On Tuesday, Keita said he would “begin consultations for the formation of a government of national unity,” in an apparent overture to Mali’s political opposition.
However, the constitutional court caused controversy in Mali in April when it overturned several results for parliamentary seats in the recent elections.
In a move that triggered protests in several cities, Mali’s constitutional court in April overturned the results in some 30 seats, which saw about a dozen candidates from the presidential party take parliamentary seats.
Keita’s decision to form a new government of national unity also comes after speculation in Bamako political circles about whether the president would dissolve the parliament.
Required to appear in court on Friday, award-winning and renowned Zimbabwean author, Tsitsi Dangarembga — facing charges for disturbing the peace and inciting violence following her arrest at anti-government Harare-based prohibited protests in June.
The arrest took place days after her latest novel, 'This Mournable Body,' was included in the long list of nominees for the Booker Prize.
The Cambridge-educated writer, who was released on bail July 1st and is the only female writer from Zimbabwe to have won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, has been recently using her word-weaving talents to call for government reform in the country.
Two years after coming into power, President Emmerson Mnangagwa is accused of using the Covid-19 pandemic to repress political opposition and free speech in the media, as over 60 people have been arrested for staging demonstrations to call out corruption and national economic stagnation.
Among others, two notable arrests in recent months were of prominent journalist Hopewell Chin'ono and Fadzayi Mahere, an advocate for the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance, Zimbabwe's main opposition party.
While protests continued outside The Fish Market in Clinton that's been closed for more than a week, organizers and patrons decided to showcase Black-owned businesses across the street.
Iron fist
Nkurunziza had been president of Burundi for the past 15 years.
The transition
We could anchor Burundi's political transition to Nkurunziza's decision not to seek a fourth term of office, which he first signalled in 2015 and reiterated in 2018.
It is highly unlikely, therefore, that transition in Burundi will dramatically deviate from the existing status quo, given the existence of entrenched interests, particularly the military and ruling party elites.
In Burundi's case this means rallying around Nkurunziza's chosen successor, Ndayishimiye.
Burundi blamed the failed coup attempt against Nkurunziza in 2015 on its northern neighbour, Rwanda.
Tunis/Tunisia — The bureau of the House of People's Representatives (HPR) decided at its meeting Tuesday to hold a plenary session on June 2 to review two draft laws.
In a press release, the HPR bureau said it had included on the agenda of the plenary session an item on the vote on the end of the exceptional procedures relating to the functioning of the Parliament.
The HPR bureau, chaired by Rached Ghannouchi, also considered the announcement of the resignation of MP Zouhaier Makhlouf from the Qalb Tounes bloc.
It also decided to refer to the relevant committee the request to withdraw MP Amine Missaoui's signature from the legislative initiative on the criminalisation of defamation on the internet.
[RFI] French President Emmanuel Macron met with Djibouti's long-standing leader Ismaël Omar Guelleh in Paris on Friday, with the renegotiation of a military agreement at the top of the agenda. The deal gives France the right to host its biggest foreign military base in the Horn of Africa country.
The announcement comes as Brazil's COVID-19 confirmed cases and death count trails only the United States with 1,623,284 infected Brazilians and 65,000 deaths. Its gotten so bad that mass graves have been used to bury thousands of Coronavirus victims as the death rate continues to rise. Like a certain orange hued madman, Bolsonaro resisted shutting down his country's economy and pushed for businesses, beaches and other establishments to remain open or re-open before things got under control. Sound familiar?
ST GEORGE'S, Grenada (CMC) The Grenada Government says it has had to postpone the planned reopening of the international airport to July 15, because of the heightened risks from the novel coronavirus observed in some major source markets in recent weeks.
New data from UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has revealed worsening nutritional situation for children in Burkina Faso, with more than 535,000 children under the age of five suffering from acute malnutrition – an unprecedented level.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, listens during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on June 30. Al Drago/Pool/Getty Images
The United States' leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said White House coronavirus task force leader Vice President Mike Pence is doing “a very good job.”
Fauci and task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx regularly sound the alarm about the pandemic at briefings or in interviews, while Pence has touted what a good job the Trump administration is doing.
“He is trying in his role as the vice president to really, in a certain sense, also point out some of the things that are going well,” Fauci told the Wall Street Journal in a podcast Wednesday.
“So, he's a person who's an optimistic person and he's doing a very good job as the leader of the task force, I must say.
“I look at the data, I analyze the data and I give my best opinion based on the evidence.\"
Fauci said there are many facets to the task force discussions, and he and his colleagues are primarily focused on public health. Pence, he said, has other concerns.
“There’s the issue and the need, from an economic standpoint, to get open,\" Fauci said. \"So all of that goes into the mix and then you see the kind of recommendations that go out but you know as a member of the task force, I’m telling you that we have a serious situation that we really do need to address.”
Fauci said the public health and economic policies need to work in tandem. Other health experts worry that President Donald Trump has pushed his economic priorities at the expense of American lives. So far, more than 132,000 Americans have died from Covid-19.
“We shouldn't think of it as one against the other because once you start thinking there’s public health and there's the economy opening it looks like they're opposing forces,” Fauci said.
“So, what we're trying to do is to get the public health message, if heard and implemented, be actually a gateway to facilitate opening and an easier way instead of there’s guys are on this side and those guys and ladies are on the other side.”
The post At least 24 states pause reopening as cases hit 3 million across US appeared first on L.A. Focus Newspaper.
By The Associated Press
A summit that included a star-studded virtual concert hosted by Dwayne Johnson has raised nearly $7 billion in cash and loan guarantees to assist the poor around the globe whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic.
Global Citizen said its summit with world leaders had raised $1.5 billion to help COVID-19 efforts in poor countries, along with a promise of 250 million doses of a vaccine for those nations if one is successfully developed.
The event included a Johnson-hosted concert with performances by Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus, Coldplay and Chloe x Halle.
“The $6.9 billion that was pledged today to support the world’s poorest and most marginalized communities is an incredible next step on our journey out of the COVID-19 era, but there is more still to be done, as no one is safe until everyone is safe,” Hugh Evans, CEO of Global Citizen, said after the event Saturday.
“As we fight this virus, we also need to take care of the most vulnerable people and address the challenges they’re facing right now,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during the event.
Press Release - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is making the most of this period of global turmoil to entrench the relentless repression that has been his trademark. His seven-year rule has seen tens of thousands of political detentions in often horrendous conditions, the arrest and abuse of LGBT people, women activists, and social media influencers, systematic torture, and the free use of lethal force. His government's latest move is to detain the director and key staff of one of the few remaining independent in
The People’s National Party (PNP) is rejecting as baseless the assertion by Prime Minister Andrew Holness that the party is pushing a strategy of confrontation in the ongoing election campaign. \tHolness issued the critique following his...
U.S. Department of State Background Note
Guinea is located on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa and is bordered by Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côte dIvoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The country is divided into four geographic regions: A narrow coastal belt (Lower Guinea); the pastoral Fouta Djallon highlands (Middle Guinea); the northern savannah (Upper Guinea); and a southeastern rain-forest region (Forest Guinea). The Niger, Gambia, and Senegal Rivers are among the 22 West African rivers that have their origins in Guinea.
The coastal region of Guinea and most of the inland have a tropical climate, with a rainy season lasting from April to November, relatively high and uniform temperatures, and high humidity. Conakrys year-round average high is 29oC (85oF), and the low is 23oC (74oF); its average annual rainfall is 430 centimeters (169 inches). Sahelian Upper Guinea has a shorter rainy season and greater daily temperature variations.
Guinea has four main ethnic groups:
West Africans make up the largest non-Guinean population. Non-Africans total about 10,000 (mostly Lebanese, French, and other Europeans). Seven national languages are used extensively; major written languages are French, Peuhl, and Arabic.
The area occupied by Guinea today was included in several large West African political groupings, including the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires, at various times from the 10th to the 15th century, when the region came into contact with European commerce. Guineas colonial period began with French military penetration into the area in the mid-19th century. French domination was assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of Almamy Samory Touré, warlord and leader of Malinke descent, which gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.
France negotiated Guineas present boundaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the British for Sierra Leone, the Portuguese for their Guinea colony (now Guinea-Bissau), and the Liberia. Under the French, the country formed the Territory
Danville was a tobacco and textile town of about 50,000 residents, a third of whom were black.
In May 1883, the town’s black majority helped elect the Readjusters—a political coalition of moderate whites, Republicans, and African Americans—and blacks were appointed as aldermen and policemen.
On May 31, 1963, a group of blacks met under the auspices of the Danville Christian Progressive Association.
Like their counterparts in Birmingham, the protesters in Danville pressed for desegregated facilities, equal employment opportunities, representation in city government, and creation of a biracial commission to monitor racial progress.
The city resisted the demands of the movement, and with every strength of power, created a hostile environment which included seeking injunctions under a pre-Civil war “John Brown” statute against any person conspiring to incite the black population to uprise against the city.
From digital certificates to ‘health passports’, countries are hoping to relaunch travel by letting people prove their COVID-free status.
