Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
The Ethiopian government expelled seven UN officials accusing them of interference in internal politics
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Geneva — 'We share the faults' when things go wrong
The UN has pledged to \"carefully consider\" the recommendations of an operational review into humanitarian aid operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a draft of the document leaked to The New Humanitarian revealed widespread corruption and abuse.
The operational review was commissioned by an anti-fraud taskforce created by UN agencies and aid groups in Congo after the NGO Mercy Corps discovered a large-scale fraud scheme in late 2018 - first made public this week after a more than nine-month investigation by TNH.
\"We share the faults\" when things go wrong, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Congo, David McLachlan-Karr, said in a frank statement, vowing that the UN would do \"everything possible to maintain... trust by fighting fraud, corruption and abuse at all levels\".
McLachlan-Karr said allegations in the review that the selection committee of the UN's humanitarian pooled fund - a major pot run by the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA - had demanded kickbacks from national NGOs in exchange for contracts could \"damage donor confidence in the Fund and ancillary financing\".
The operational review said there is a mutual lack of trust between aid groups and communities in Congo, who \"perceive humanitarian aid as corrupt and driven by external agendas\".
Tiffany Haddish is one of the celebrities who attended a memorial for George Floyd on Thursday in Minnesota, and while some wanted to focus on how upset she made them, Haddish wanted them to focus on Floyd and police brutality.
Besides Haddish, other celebrities who attended the memorial service included Kevin Hart, T.I., and Ludacris.
I was blessed and honored to be asked to attend the memorial service of George Floyd, our brother, who was murdered, which led us to this moment.”
Haddish was called up by Sharpton toward the end of the memorial service to stand on stage for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the same amount of time that Chauvin drove his knee into Floyd’s neck.
There will be other memorial services for Floyd in the coming days like the one that took place June 6 in his birthplace of Raeford, North Carolina and Houston, where he grew up.
Recording superstar Lady Gaga selected The Marsha P. Johnson Institute to take over her Instagram account and called on her 42.5 million followers to advocate for Black transgender women to help end the daily fight they endure against systemic racism.
On June 28, 2020, Elle Hearns, founder and executive director the institute, will use this generous opportunity to familiarize people with trans rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, and her work on behalf of Black transgender people.
It is the consideration of who “Black Marsha” was that inspired The Marsha P. Johnson Institute.
“As the world continues to make their voice louder on the topic of racial and social injustice in our country, The Marsha P. Johnson Institute is honored to lend our voice to the millions of followers on Lady Gaga’s Instagram,” said Elle Hearns, founder and executive director.
The event featured a diverse lineup of DJs, drag queens, personalities, and fans dancing “together” while raising money for The Marsha P. Johnson Institute.
[East African] Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is set to form a new government, following a landslide victory for his Prosperity Party in the General Election. But the victory is bitter-sweet as he suffers a blot on his international stature over accusations of abetting atrocities in Tigray.
East African countries have borrowed nearly $2.3 billion new loans in less than three months since reporting the first Covid-19 positive case, adding to the region’s mounting debts at a time of shrinking tax revenue.
President John Magufuli has called for cancellation of Tanzania’s foreign debts, but Dar es Salaam together with Burundi and South Sudan is yet to announce any new loans during this period.
Rwanda has borrowed $109.4 million from the IMF to smoothen foreign exchange pressures, $14.25 million from the International Development Association (IDA) for its Covid-19 emergency response kitty and $100 million from the World Bank for budget support.
The Bank of Uganda (BoU) says there’s a risk of the country sliding into debt repayment crisis due to mounting expenditure pressures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic against the backdrop of a weakening economy and falling revenue collections.
EA governments were already running record high debt levels before the Covid-19 outbreak, with Kenya’s total debt soaring above the Ksh6 trillion ($60 billion) mark (over 60 per cent of GDP) while Uganda’s provisional total public debt stock as at January 31 2020 stood at Ush49.75 trillion ($13 billion), which is about 36.5 per cent of GDP.
[News24Wire] Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says it is unfortunate and regrettable that taxi operators have decided to violate Covid-19 lockdown regulations, after they announced that they will fill their taxis to 100% capacity and up inter-provincial travelling as of Monday.
IN THE early hours of November 4, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the...
The post Ethiopian National Defense Forces Base comes under attack appeared first on Voice Online.
[East African] The Ethiopian government on Wednesday began restricting telephone and internet services to the troubled Tigray region, hours after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered a military response to an ambush on the military.
Sudan has called for a ceasefire and dialogue in neighbouring Ethiopia, warning of regional instability, as fighting intensified in war-hit Tigray region across the border.
The Conflict Gets Worse
The Tigrayan regional government has fired rockets at two airports in the neighbouring Amhara region in Ethiopia with spokesman Reda asserting that further retaliation could continue and even Asmara in Eritrea could be targeted. The Ethiopian federal government confirmed that Gondar and Bahir Dar airports were damaged in the strikes late Friday — as the deadly conflict threatens to spread to not only other parts of Africa's second-most populous country but more areas in the horn of Africa.
Since the conflict began Nov 4th, reports from the Tigray region — still under a national state of emergency, see hundreds of people on both sides losing their lives and over 21,000 Ethiopians fleeing to neighbouring Eastern Sudan.
Many authorities in the international community who caution against inter-ethnic genocide fear a possible all-out civil war — compounded by the already chaélengiong Covid-19 pandemic.
Somalia’s President Mohamed Farmaajo has taken a step further to mend relations with federal member states and put the electoral programme back on track.
On Wednesday, President Farmaajo invited all the five federal state presidents to Mogadishu to a meeting, set for July, to discuss elections, national security and economic issues.
“His Excellency (Mohamed Farmaajo) will host Federal Member States Presidents and Governor of Banadir Administration in Mogadishu to deliberate on a vast of issues significant to the Federal Republic of Somalia,” Mr Ahmed said.
“The meeting is a good gesture, after nearly two years of no substantive communication and collaboration between the federal government and the federal member states,” said Ilyas Ali Hassan, a Somali senator and foreign secretary of opposition party Himilo-Qaran, which is led by former president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
When the virtual meeting ended on Monday, a dispatch indicated that the leaders had agreed to meet face to face, but that parliament will delay debating amendments to electoral regulations until the input of the federal member states is included.
[East African] Nearly 20 years since the civil war ended in Angola, landmines laid in the ground before the country gained independence in 1975 continue to maim civilians across the country.
[VOA] Rebel forces from Ethiopia's Tigray region denied reports Wednesday that they had killed dozens of civilians over a two-day period in the Amhara area.
[Nation] The Ethiopian government on Wednesday warned it will cancel ceasefire deal if fighters loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front violate truce.
Unsurprisingly, the US government's own findings reveal racial disparities in sentencing as well, with Black prisoners' sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those of white prisoners.
The Guardian's database of police killings in the US revealed that the number of young Black men killed in 2015 was five times higher than that of white men of the same age.
As noted in the 1968 landmark report by the Kerner Commission, convened after the 1967 unrest in Detroit, racial disparities in the US criminal justice system go hand in hand with \"culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination\" in Black communities seen in inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression and access to upward mobility.
Rather this article is meant to illustrate that should Black Americans seek international protection, they could very well receive it given their country's disastrous human rights record and the pervasive institutional discrimination they suffer.
The US may pride itself on being a bastion of human rights, but it is clear Black Americans are not receiving their fair treatment, access or share.
OPPOSITION Leader Dr Peter Phillips on Sunday chided Prime Minister Andrew Holness for suggesting that the country's crime problem has evolved beyond the capacity to contain it.
The prime minister said that many of the crimes in Jamaica are being fuelled by these external forces, creating a need for more investment, over time, to build out the security architecture.
And if the prime minister thinks it is, that is probably why they have prepared no security plan that the country can line up behind for the whole four years that they have been in office,” Dr Phillips said.
Dr Phillips applauded the stakeholder group that met with both himself and Prime Minister Holness last week on the issue of crime.
In every single area of national life that is in crisis — whether it be crime, whether it be the absence of economic growth, whether it is poor governance — the JLP Government has failed and failed miserably, and the people of Jamaica need to understand that we represent the answer,” Dr Phillips concluded.
Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church (EBC) and the Martin Luther King Sr.
Collaborative) provided FREE masks and hand sanitizer kits to various marginalized populations throughout the metro Atlanta area.
“Our focus is on the underserved Atlanta communities by ensuring they have access to invaluable resources during this ongoing pandemic,” says Dr. Raphael Warnock, Senior Pastor of the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Ebenezer Baptist Church is proud to partner with LIVE FREE and the MLK Sr.
The church is preparing a second wave of kits to be distributed over the next several days to the wider Atlanta community.
Western Cape community safety MEC Albert Fritz says accredited neighbourhood watches will need to obtain an adjusted Level 4 travel permit to continue patrols.
In a now-viral post sharing her new professional headshot, Koai Martin is helping make the standard of what is considered \"professional\" more inclusive.
Today is the 224th day of 2020. There are 142 days left in the year.TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT2010: Reasearchers say two ancient animal bones from Ethiopia show signs of butchering by human ancestors, moving back the earliest evidence for the use of stone tools by about 800,000 years.�OTHER EVENTS1712: Treaty of Araru ends Swiss War, guaranteeing domination of Protestants over five Catholic cantons.
[Nation] Tigray Defence Forces (TDF), that retook regional capital, Mekelle, from Ethiopian government forces, have issued conditions for a truce with the central administration.