A spectre is hanging over the Zambian election campaign in the shape of former President Edgar Lungu. Despite having died more than a year ago in South Africa, his body remains unburied amid a bitter dispute between President Hakainde Hichilema and the Lungu family that has sharpened political divisions. This has had a role in energising support for the opposition National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity (NRPUP), particularly in the northern half of the country, traditional strongholds of Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF), as people see it as offering the best chance to unseat the incumbent. Meanwhile, it has complicated…
Author: Agency
A former gang leader goes on trial Monday in Las Vegas over the decades-old murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, one of America’s most high-profile unresolved murders. The proceedings, expected to last a month, will likely not make clear who fired the shots that killed the hip-hop legend on the night of September 7, 1996 while he was in Sin City to see a Mike Tyson boxing match. But prosecutors aim to show that the defendant, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the onetime leader of the South Side Compton Crips, ordered the killing and provided the gun used to kill Shakur in…
Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye is in intensive care in hospital, his wife and medical sources said on Thursday, as the UN blasted a wider crackdown on dissent. Besigye, 70, has been in custody and facing treason charges over an alleged plot against veteran President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986. At a court appearance on Wednesday, Besigye rejected state-appointed lawyers. He was expressing anger at his own representatives being refused when he collapsed. His wife Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, wrote on X: “He has been admitted to the ICU at Mulago Hospital (in…
Escalating tit-for-tat strikes have pushed the United States and Iran further into conflict as the US carried out its latest round of raids on Monday, while Iran targeted US assets across the Gulf. Even amid continuing mediation efforts, a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia’s ports declared by Yemen’s Houthi militants has stoked fresh risks to global energy supply chains. The US Central Command said late on Monday that its 10th consecutive night of strikes aimed to “further degrade Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial shipping” in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported explosions hit Sirik,…
Israel’s defence minister said Sunday that his country would respond powerfully to any attack by Iran, after Israeli and Jordanian forces intercepted an Iranian missile launched towards the Jordanian city of Aqaba. “If Iran fires missiles at Israel, we will attack them with full force,” Israel Katz said during a visit to a rescue service facility. “If the United States changes its policy, which is also something that could happen, we are prepared for both defensive and offensive” action against Tehran, he added. Aqaba lies just across the border from the Israeli city of Eilat. Israel kills Hamas military chief…
Kenyan politicians are hiring armed thugs for as little as $4 per day, as poverty and ruthless political competition threaten to unleash uncontrollable violence ahead of elections next year. So-called “goons” are increasingly being hired, dozens or even hundreds at a time, to break up the rallies of political opponents and protesters and attack civil rights groups — with police often turning a blind eye. A recent study by Nairobi-based research firm Odipo Dev revealed a goons rate card, ranging from 500 shillings ($4) to work for a local councillor to as much as 1,000 shillings for members of parliament.…
World oil prices surged Monday as a fresh flare-up between the United States and Iran rattled investors, while a selloff in chipmakers sent South Korea’s stock market plunging. Oil prices shot up more than nine percent as President Donald Trump announced the reimposition of a US naval blockade on Iranian ports while threatening the US would charge a 20 percent rate on all cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for petroleum shipments. Iran’s military warned on Monday that it would not allow the United States to “interfere” in the management of the Strait of Hormuz, while…
A huge fire tore through a bar in Bangkok late on Sunday, killing at least 27 people and leaving 22 critically injured. The blaze started near the stage of the bar in the popular Chatuchak district, then spread rapidly, cutting power and engulfing the room with smoke, eyewitnesses say. Footage posted online show panicked customers screaming as they fled – some with their clothes on fire – through the flame-enveloped front door of Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao. Firefighters, who arrived at the scene just after midnight, quickly extinguished the fire. They found the bodies of most of the victims…
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday the ceasefire with Iran was “over” after the two sides traded fire, but added that negotiators could keep talking to Tehran. Trump blasted Iran as “scum” and “cuckoo” after Washington launched strikes on the Islamic Republic overnight and Iran’s Guards said they had targeted US bases in the Gulf. Oil prices jumped five percent after Trump’s remarks. “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them any more, they’re scum,” Trump said at a NATO summit in the Turkish capital Ankara when asked if the truce with Iran was now finished. “They’re…
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Ethiopian authorities to release journalist Salsawit Baynesagn, detained without charge by officials since early June, according to her family. The Horn of Africa country of some 130 million people has one of the world’s worst records for press freedom — ranked 148 out of 180 by Reporters Without Borders. Restrictions were briefly eased when the current prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, rose to power in 2018 but that soon gave way to a renewed crackdown. “Salsawit Baynesagn’s detention without charge or without being brought before a court within 48 hours is a serious violation…
