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Violence rocked Guinea's capital Conakry on Friday as supporters of opposition leader Cellou Diallo clashed with security forces who tried to disperse them.
They threw stones and blocked roads. Police responded with teargas and bullets. The clashes erupted as soon as provisional results released by the electoral commission showed president Alpha Conde winning with a big margin.
Conde, 82, won twice as many votes as his nearest rival, opposition candidate Cellou Dalein Diallo, with 37 of 38 districts counted, according to preliminary results from the commission.
Opposition supporters accuse the electoral authorities of rigging the vote for incumbent president Alpha Conde.
Sekou Koundouno, head of mobilisation for the opposition coalition FNDC said Conde had committed 'high treason'.
"He is an illegal and illegitimate candidate who is stubbornly pursuing his obsession to turn Guin ea into a monarchy in which, by the way, he will dictate orders to his subjects," said Kounduno.
Diallo maintains that he won with a landslide despite irregularities, according to his own tally. He remains barricaded in his home which security forces have besieged since Monday.
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
Many people have been killed since clashes began on Monday. Scores too had been killed in the run up to the vote as protestors marched against Conde's bid for a third term.
Government will have to purchase over 137,000 television sets if they are to facilitate distance learning as proposed by President Museveni.
In his televised address on Monday, Mr Museveni postponed the partial reopening of schools for another one month but said \"children must continue studying under the distance learning programme\" on televisions and radios.
He made a number of proposals to facilitate the programme, among them; provision of two television sets to each village and a radio set to each home.
Mr Museveni says much as there are fears that the TV sets could bring about congregation, thereby undermining social distancing of the children, he is optimistic that it is easy to identify any child who has the virus since they are from one village.
\"Children from the same village, if they have sickness it would have already shown up,\" added Mr Museveni.
With two weeks to go for what is being described as one of the most important presidential elections in the history of the United States, Jamaicans in the US have high expectations of whoever takes the White House. Of particular interest to...
All planned Election Commission (EC) activities between March and May 2020, including elections for Special Interest Groups (SIG), have been suspended until further notice.
The EC secretary, Mr Sam Rwakoojo, on Tuesday said the Covid-19 lockdown affected many programmes on the elections roadmap and that discussions with different stakeholders are on-going to see how to readjust.
At the time government issued the directives, the EC was completing the public display of the national voters' register for the elections scheduled for April 2020.
The activities which have been affected according to the roadmap include display of tribunal recommendations for deletion or inclusion on the National Voters Register (NVR), gazetting and publishing of candidates' nomination dates and venues, Elections of Special Interest Groups (SIGs), including older persons, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) and youth at village and parish levels and internal political party candidates identification processes.
Former coordinator of Citizen Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda, Mr Crispy Kaheru, said the way out is to suspend the planned 2021 electoral programmes to fit between the months of July and October or have the elections of SIG after the General Election.
Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika has appointed a new electoral commission chairperson ahead of a presidential re-run.
The country’s Constitutional Court in February ordered a fresh presidential election be held within 150 days after annulling last year’s re-election of President Mutharika – a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court.
The former commission chairperson Jane Ansah resigned amid criticism by the opposition on how she managed the disputed election.
President Mutharika on Sunday appointed Justice Chifundo Kachale to head the electoral commission.
The new chairperson is expected by voters to deliver a credible presidential election devoid of irregularities as ordered by the courts.
Supporters of Malawi’s new president Lazarus Chakwera gathered for a fireworks display in the capital Lilongwe, celebrating his victory in a keen presidential election re-run.
Chakwera won with 58.57 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said Saturday.
It was a dramatic reversal of fortune for incumbent, Peter Mutharika, whose victory in the May 2019 election was overturned by the Constitutional Court, citing widespread fraud.
And on Saturday, electoral commission announced that Chakwera has been duly elected as the president of Malawi.
In office since 2014, Mutharika had won 38.5 percent of the discredited vote in which Chakwera garnered a close 35.4 percent.
WHEN will the pandemic end?All these months in, with more than 37 million COVID-19 cases and more than one million deaths globally, you may be wondering, with increasing exasperation, how long this will continue.
The state wants the posts introduced as evidence.
Malawi's parliament has endorsed June 23 as the date for the presidential election re-run after a court annulled last year's vote over irregularities, a lawmaker says.
Malawian voters defied the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday to return to the polls for the second time in just over a year after President Peter Mutharika's re-election was annulled in a dramatic court ruling.
Tuesday's election was practically a two-horse race between the president and Lazarus Chakwera, who lost the election by 159 000 votes.
First, this election is born out of a court ruling and second, they will follow the 50-percent-plus-one system,\" the group said.
\"This is our date with destiny and this is (the) time for the beginning of a new Malawi,\" he said, expressing \"confidence\" the electoral commission will do what is right.
In a statement, the UN called on Malawi's \"political actors and stakeholders to renew their commitment to credible and peaceful elections, while observing all preventive measures against the spread of Covid-19\".
COVID-19 is showing its impact on storied football programs.
Parliament on Tuesday passed a resolution tasking government to waive water and electricity bills for a period of six months to help relieve the many Ugandans in the post-lockdown recovery process.
While debating a motion moved by Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga, the legislators said since the lockdown was imposed in March, many Ugandans spend a lot of time at home and consume a lot of electricity and water more than they would use while at work.
Mr Mpuuga argued that Uganda should borrow a leaf from other countries, including Ghana, which have already paid off the water and electricity bills for the citizens for a specific period of time.
Ms Jesca Ababiku (Adjumani Woman, NRM) said much as the people in rural areas are not connected to water provided by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), there is a need for government to also repair boreholes and other dilapidated water sources.
The MPs said with President Museveni not including waiver on water and electricity bills as part of a stimulus package during the State of the Nation Address on June 4, payment of the cumulative bills will suffocate many Ugandans.
[Nation] Nation Media Group's television outlet NTV will broadcast Saturday's World Athletics Half Marathon Championships live from Gdynia, Poland.
The National Identification Authority (NIA) has asked the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to report the state agency to the police if the party has any evidence to back its election rigging allegations made against the Authority on Thursday, 14 May 2020.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC), at a press conference, raised fears that the decision of the Electoral Commission to compile a new register of voters using passports and the NIA's Ghana card as proof of eligibility may give undue advantage to the governing New Patriotic Party and President Nana Akufo-Addo and also help the incumbent to rig the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2020.
According to the biggest opposition party, over 10 million Ghanaians are unable to retrieve their Ghana cards from the NIA several months after they were registered, a situation which the Chairman of the party, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, said will make it impossible for them to be captured on the new electoral roll.
At a counter-press conference on Friday, 15 May 2020, the Executive Director of the NIA, Prof Ken Attafuah, said it was a \"disturbing allegation that the NIA, in consent with the Electoral Commission, embarked on an election-rigging agenda in order to benefit the New Patriotic Party, and most disturbingly, to disenfranchise a significant portion of the Ghanaian populace from their rights to exercise their franchise\".
\"I want to assure the good people of this country that the NIA is not involved in any such criminal design or enterprise with the EC, with the government of Ghana or any with any person or entity whatsoever described.
By DAVID EGGERT Associated Press GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Call him low-key, understated, maybe even 'boring.' First-term Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan is betting voters care more about his effectiveness, as he desperately fights to keep a seat his party is counting on to take the Senate majority. The bespectacled, bearded 61-year-old former investment adviser is a rare Senate candidate this cycle, a Democrat running in a battleground state Donald Trump carried in 2016. But unlike Democrat Joe Biden, whose lead over the president has grown, Peters is finding it tougher to shake top Republican recruit John James, a […]
The post Low-key Democrat tries to hang onto Senate seat in Michigan appeared first on Black News Channel.
Emotions ran high Friday as two black suspects appeared in a South African court over the murder of a white farmer which has sparked racial tensions.
A barbed wire fence ringed the court house in the central town of Senekal and police and a water cannon were deployed as opposing groups of white farmers and black activists gathered near the site.
Around 2,000 supporters of the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters gathered for eight hours under scorching heat for a protest.
Crime in this sleepy but rich farming area, 300 kilometres (180 miles) south of Johannesburg, is centred mainly around stock theft, which farmers say is rampant. Murders are relatively rare.
But on October 2, the body of 22-year-old farm manager Brendin Horner was found. He had been strangled and tied to a fence at a farm in Paul Roux near Senekal.
A silver cross with his name engraved on it has been erected at the spot where the body was discovered.
- Unrest -
The killing of white farmers is a highly emotive issue in South Africa. Some conservative groups claim that farmers are victims of a genocide and the government is not doing enough to protect them.
\"This young man is paying with his life, he is going to help us solve the (crime) problem,\" Horner's employer Gilly Scheeper, 58, said in reference to the attention brought to the case.
Scheeper has hired private investigators to run a parallel probe into the death \"because police here are corrupt\".
The motive for the murder has not been established, but a police officer who is investigating the case said the farmer's wallet went missing after the attack.
A dozen policemen guarded the court house on Friday, dressed in bulletproof jackets and armed with assault rifles. Elsewhere around the court's precincts, police patrolled in cars and from a helicopter.
The two suspects -- Sekwetja Mahlamba, 32 and Sekolo Mlatlaletsa, 44 -- wore grey jerseys as they appeared for their bail hearing.
One of them has previously been arrested 16 times and convicted four times for stock theft and housebreaking.
\"I don't think that they should get bail because of the seriousness of the offence,\" investigating police officer Gerhard Peter Myburgh told the court.
\"This incident has also caused unrest in Senekal to such an extent that there were people who tried to remove the suspects from court,\" said Myburgh.
- 'Acts of criminality' -
Whites, mainly farmers, stormed the court house and torched a police van when the suspects first appeared in court last week.
The alleged instigator of last week's court rioting, businessman Andre Pienaar, is in custody facing charges of public violence, attempted murder and incitement.
The suspected killers' bail hearing will continue on October 20.
President of the People’s National Party (PNP), Dr Peter Phillips, is demanding assurances that the legal and technical issues involved in staging both the local government and general elections on one ballot be ironed out before concluding on what would be a historic move.
Addressing PNP councillors and councillor caretakers at The Mico University College on Sunday, Phillips said that the Government had formally engaged the Electoral Commission of Jamaica on the cost-saving measure.
“The Electoral Commission has identified a number of technical and legal issues that they are examining, and certainly, we would need as a party to be entirely clear that all the arrangements are in place are legal and constitutional and, in fact, are practical, if we are to agree to do it, and that is being done,” Phillips said.
The PNP president told Comrades that the slate of 63 prospective parliamentary candidates was the “best” ever assembled, adding that a majority of the party’s local government standard-bearers were in place.
He said that the electorate was looking for the PNP “... to provide a set of representatives in local and central government whose only objective is to serve the people of Jamaica and not to serve themselves or to secure personal benefit for themselves.
WASHINGTON, United States (AP) - Gone are the days when President Donald Trump held forth daily at the White House podium flanked by members of his novel coronavirus task force. And the days when Vice-President Mike Pence and other task force officials would head to Trump's office to brief him immediately after their meetings. The White House won't say when Trump last met with the task force.
Malawians return to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in just over a year to vote for a new president after Peter Mutharika's re-election was annulled over rigging.
The election is much anticipated after the Constitutional Court early this year ruled that the May 2019 vote, won narrowly by Mutharika, was fraught with \"grave and widespread irregularities\" including the use of correction fluid on results sheets.
Tuesday's election is practically a two-horse race between the president and his main rival Lazarus Chakwera, who lost the May 2019 election by 159,000 votes.
Last week Kachale vowed \"the highest commitment of myself and the entire commission to deliver a credible election whose results will be acceptable by all stakeholders\".
Gift Trapence of the Human Rights Defenders Coalition, which led months-long countrywide street protests against last year's election results, has high hopes this time around.
Thursday (Oct.16), mobile games developer and publisher Big Run Studios, in collaboration with mobile game platform Skillz, announced it is teaming up with Super Bowl champion Marshawn Lynch to celebrate the one year anniversary of the game Blackout Bingo.
By BRIAN SLODYSKO and JILL COLVIN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is making a late reelection pitch to voters Saturday in Michigan and Wisconsin, states in the Upper Midwest that were instrumental to his 2016 victory but may now be slipping from his grasp. He's facing headwinds not only in national polling, which shows Democrat Joe Biden leading, but also in battleground surveys. The Trump campaign has largely retreated from the TV advertising in the Midwest, shifting much of its money to Sun Belt states such as Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia, as well as Pennsylvania. […]
The post Headwinds for Trump in bid to repeat Upper Midwest victories appeared first on Black News Channel.
A California-based rapper faces fraud charges after being arrested for a crime he bragged about on a recently released song.... View Article
The post Rapper boasting of unemployment scam arrested for fraud, theft appeared first on TheGrio.
By AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Gone are the days when President Donald Trump held forth daily at the White House podium flanked by members of his coronavirus task force. And the days when Vice President Mike Pence and other task force officials would head to Trump's office to brief him immediately after their meetings. The White House won't say when Trump last met with the task force. In the week since he emerged from coronavirus isolation, Trump has demonstrated new determination to minimize the threat of the virus that has killed more than 215,000 […]
The post Trump plays down virus as he steps up pitch for second term appeared first on Black News Channel.
Western Bureau: With some reports suggesting that as many as 50 per cent of the students in Hanover have not been benefiting from the teaching-learning process since the start of the new school year, several prominent stakeholders in the parish,...
By AIDA SULTANOVA Associated Press BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday announced a new attempt to establish a cease-fire in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh starting from midnight, a move that comes a week after a Russia-brokered truce frayed immediately after it took force. The new agreement was announced following Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's calls with his counterparts from the two nations, in which he strongly urged them to abide by the Moscow deal. There were no immediate claims of violations after the truce took effect at midnight. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the […]
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Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Christopher Tufton, says the Ministry is looking to launch a Community COVID Conversation Programme.\tHe said the initiative, which would incorporate youth leaders, aims to educate persons in communities...
The fee overseeing the distribution of federal cash supplied to companies negatively impacted by the pandemic mentioned that it has but to listen to from the Protection Division concerning a…
By Gerri Detweiler Treefort Music Fest, a well-liked music and humanities pageant in Boise, Idaho, was set to open for its ninth annual occasion two weeks after the Covid-19 disaster…
[allAfrica] As of October 17, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 from 55 African countries have reached 1,623,827. Reported deaths in Africa have reached 39,296, and recoveries 1,336,069.
[Monitor] Members of Parliament (MPs) sitting on the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee yesterday rejected the Electoral Commission's (EC) decision banning open public rallies ahead of the 2021 General Elections.
