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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.
Institute alerts for evidence of soil changes in the Amazon show areas that have been deforested, damaged by logging and show signs of burning or mining, as well as plant degradation from February 2016 to June 2020 in the Brazilian Legal Amazon.
The data indicates that deforestation and burning will be greater during this summer’s Amazon drought months, June-August, than in the same period last year.
Salles said in a recent meeting with Bolsonaro that it would be easy to pass new environmental rules and regulations that didn’t depend on the National Congress for approval, while the country is focused on the coronavirus pandemic.
He also has threatened to review the 334 environmental conservation units in Brazil, managed by the Chico Mendes Institute of Biodiversity, and dismantling the agency as he did with IBAMA, leaving the inspectors without the financial resources and autonomy to work.
As a result of some of the government’s policies, and as deforestation continues, institute data indicates this year’s fires may be worse than in 2019.
An al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group has claimed responsibility for an attack that killed two French soldiers in Mali.
French Defence Minister Florence Parly has urged governments in the Sahel to uphold human rights during military operations, in a report on the progress of France's regional Operation Barkhane before the French senate's foreign affairs committee.
Parly was positive about the deployment of the European Takouba force, made up of special forces troops from several European countries under French command, as well as the strengthening of the G5 Sahel force of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad.
Respect for human rights
The French defence minister called on governments of the G5 group to ensure that their troops respect human rights during military operations amid accusations over executions carried out by soldiers.
\"Political leaders of the Sahel countries are perfectly aware of what's at stake,\" Parly told French senators from the foreign affairs committee.
Parly said that international support for operations against jihadist groups in the region could be called into question if rights abuses by G5 Sahel soldiers continue.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he can understand why Muslims were shocked by caricatures depicting the prophet Muhammad.
But in an interview with Al Jazeera broadcast on Saturday, he said he could never accept the issue being used to justify violence.
\"I understand and respect that we can be shocked by these caricatures,\" Macron said.
\"I will never accept that we can justify physical violence for these caricatures and I will always defend in my country the freedom to say, to write, to think, to draw.\"
Tensions flared with some Muslim majority countries who have held anti-Macron protests and called for a boycott of French products after he publically promised France would not “renounce the caricatures”.
Macron made the comments following the October 16 murder of French school teacher Samuel Paty, who was killed after he showed his class drawings of the prophet during a debate on free speech.
France was also shaken on Thursday by a deadly knife attack on a church in Nice, the third suspected Islamist attack in the country in little more than a month.
The country has raised its national security alert to the highest level and security has increased at places of worship and schools.
'No problem with Islam'
Macron tried to reach out to Muslims, telling the Qatar-based channel: “I understand the feelings that this arouses, I respect them.\"
\"But I want you to understand the role that I have. My role is to calm things down, as I am doing here, but at the same time it is to protect these rights.”
The president also slammed “distortions” from political and religious leaders and the media over the depictions of the prophet, saying too often people were led to believe that they were created by the French state.
\"Everywhere these last weeks in the Muslim world, we have tried to aggregate the two, by distorting my remarks, by telling lies, by saying the President of the French Republic and thus France, they have a problem with Islam.
\"No, we have no problem with Islam. None,\" he said.
He also denounced calls for a boycott of French goods, saying it was “unworthy” and “unacceptable”.
The arrest of the most wanted genocide suspect of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Félicien Kabuga, 84, in a Paris apartment last week, highlights renewed French commitment to improve relations with Rwanda, long injured by allegations against each other on the genocide.
In an e-mail interview with The EastAfrican, Phil Clark, a professor of International Politics and scholar of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies said;
\"The discovery of Kabuga in Paris raises major questions about how long he has lived in France and about how much the French authorities knew.
His decision was unpopular in French political circles but applauded by Rwandan authorities, who had for long called on France to come clean over its role in the genocide.
In January 2016, Gen Jean-Claude Lafourcade, who led France's UN-mandated unit in Rwanda in 1994, angered Rwandan officials when he said during an inquiry that \"no ammunition, not even a bullet\" was provided by the French government to the interahamwe militia that carried out the genocide.
There should be no impediment to this trial taking place in Rwanda - and it would bolster the ICTR's legacy to have assisted the Rwandan judicial system to the extent that it can try such a high profile genocide suspect as Kabuga,\" Prof Clark said.
Félicien Kabuga, one of the leading architects of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda has been arrested, the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) said on Saturday, May 16.
Kabuga was indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1997 on seven counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, persecution and extermination, all in relation to crimes committed during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
\"The arrest of Félicien Kabuga today is a reminder that those responsible for genocide can be brought to account, even twenty-six years after their crimes,\" the Mechanism Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement.
Kabuga, known as the Financier of the Genocide, was a very wealthy businessman during the Genocide and a major shareholder of hate radio station RTLM.
As the genocide progressed, Kabuga was reportedly given a visa to enter Switzerland only to be later expelled.
A section of the council proclaimed him the tribal chieftain of the Kalenjin community only for another to disown the proclamation.
The nationalists who came to power—Nkrumah of Ghana, Kenyatta of Kenya, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi—would be crowned tribal chiefs at elaborate ceremonies where symbols of tribal authority—such as leopard skins and flywhisks—were conferred on them.
In a context bereft of ideology or principle, and where electoral competition is not among parties espousing different social and political philosophies, but between tribes and tribal chieftains, the ritual has become part of our political culture.
To engender this ethnic consciousness, tribal ideologues—often highly educated and widely travelled individuals—invoke customs and history of the tribe.
Council of elders can transform themselves from being instruments of ethnic mobilisation into bodies helping us to align cultural practices and beliefs with constitutional values.
[IFEX] Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
[ICG] Nairobi/Brussels -- Somalia's elections are fast approaching but the proper arrangements for monitoring and dispute resolution are not in place. To give authorities time to make procedural reforms, and thus lower the odds of turmoil, politicians should seek consensus behind a delay of one to three months.
[DW] The attack came just days after three French soldiers were killed in Mali by the al-Qaida-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM).
Tanzania's opposition leader and 2020 presidential candidate, Tundu Lissu has left the country for Brussels.
Lissu contested against incumbent president John Magufuli. He lost to him in what he described as an election held under corruption and voter intimidation.
Lissu had sought refuge in the German Embassy in Dar Es Salaam after multiple threats and fear for his life.
The opposition leader has been living with severe injuries since surviving an assasination attempt in 2017.
He had 12.8% of the electoral voteas against President Magufuli's 84%. Lissu has asked the international community not to recognize the election results.
Magufuli was sworn in for a second-five year term on Thursday November 5 in the Tanzanian capital. There was heavy p olice and army security presence ahead of the swearing-in ceremony.
Meanwhile, leaders of the East African nation's two main opposition parties, ACT Wazalendo and CHADEMA, who refuse to recognize Magufuli's win, have been charged with organizing an unlawful assembly.
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
RIHANNA HAS donated 4,000 tablets to help children in Barbados continue their education outside the...
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