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For thousands of Ethiopians who have fled fighting in the Tigray region to Sudan, this year’s Coptic Christmas on January 7 is a sombre celebration. There will be little feasting for those living hand-to-mouth in the crowded Um Raquba refugee camp.
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.
Senior lecturer, researcher, and coordinator of early childhood programmes at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Dr Zoyah Kinkead Clark is expressing concern for the welfare of young children, many of whom she says might be displaced come September, given the upheaval in a number of private early childhood institutions due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
What we don't understand is that in Jamaica, the majority of early childhood institutions are privately owned and prior to COVID-19 many of them were struggling, so you can well imagine that during COVID-19 and the transition out of COVID-19, if there is ever such time, it will be worst,” Dr Kinkead Clark told a digital forum hosted by the Caribbean Centre for Educational Planning last week.
“Early Childhood institutions do not benefit from those and so even the provision of tablets and other devices, early childhood teachers do not have access to those, many of them the salaries that they earn, they didn't have the capacity and so even now teachers are left on their own; so many young children are really sitting at home not doing much,” she noted.
In noting that young children are usually put at the end rather than the beginning in terms of any kind of support, she said persons with older children would tend to place more attention on their education at this point, as it is thought that somehow the children who are at the early childhood stage have time to catch up.
We have to look at how prepared are their parents to support them at this point of time,” Kinkead Clark appealed adding, “It really is a challenging time for young children, they learn in very unique ways and technology is not always the best means through which to facilitate the unique ways in which they learn.”
Before she was an adjunct professor at Malcolm X College and collections associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, Angela was a little girl who was raised mostly by her grandmother, Sharon Wright.
As a baby, Lynika and her mother, Angela Strozier moved to Chicago.
At the age of 8, she was diagnosed with a learning disability that could have left her in the failings of Chicago’s public school system in their Special Education program.
Focused and determined to have a career in the sciences, she went on to obtain her master’s in biology from Loyola University in 2018 and simultaneously a master’s in science education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
READ MORE: Coronavirus cases officially hit 10 million worldwide
Her first job after receiving the dual master was managing the Science Lab and Bio Art Lab at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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The scarcity of fuel and essential food goods is propelling Zimbabwe into its worst economic crisis in over a decade.
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THE Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Limited (ZSE) has suspended trading on the local bourse until further notice following government’s directive, Justin Bgoni, the exchange’s chief executive officer has said.
“Following the statement issued by the Secretary for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services on 26 June 2020, the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Limited (ZSE) engaged both the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZ) and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development,” Bgoni said in a statement.
Government on Friday suspended mobile money transactions as well as trading on the local bourse in an effort to contain the collapse of the country’s currency.
Government said it was “in possession of impeccable evidence which constitutes a prima facie case whereby the phone-based mobile money systems are conspiring with the help of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange either deliberately or inadvertently in illicit activities that are sabotaging the economy”
Suspension of trading on the ZSE will affect the 57 actively listed firms on the local bourse and Zimbabwe’s three mobile companies, namely, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, NetOne and Telecel Zimbabwe.
The ban comes despite the ZSE having a market capitalisation of $228,87 billion (US$4 billion) and mobile money-based transactions totalling $19 868 651 872 (US$346 445 542,66) as at the end of the first quarter.
After a contentious debate, the Eutaw City Council voted 4 to 2, at its regular meeting on June 23, to support an ordinance requiring people to wear masks when they are in public in the city.
Other cities in Alabama, like Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, have adopted similar ordinances on masks and we should do this in Eutaw, to protect our people.”
The Council approved a motion by Powell and Carpenter, “to bid out storm shelters, with at least two, one in Branch Heights and on Boligee Street, utilizing existing funds in the Branch Heights, Capital Improvements account and other accounts of the city.”
• Tabled a resolution for hazard pay bonuses for all city employees until the Council could get more clarity from the State of Alabama on the use of $147,000 in CARES funds awarded to the City for the coronavirus pandemic.
• Concerns were raised by Council members about various roads and streets in the city in need of repair due to storm erosion and washouts.
According to the 2019 Global Human Freedom index, Sierra Leone ranked 132 out of 162 countries, scoring 5.99 – dropping 20 places from 2018.
What this shows is that in the past two years, Sierra Leone’s Global Human Freedom performance has dropped 26 places., suggesting that (notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic), citizens are less free to enjoy their civil Liberties – freedom of speech, movement, security, religion, association and assembly.
This fifth annual index uses 76 distinct indicators of personal and economic freedom in the following areas:
• Rule of Law
• Security and Safety
• Movement
• Religion
• Association, Assembly, and Civil Society
• Expression and Information
• Identity and Relationships
• Size of Government
• Legal System and Property Rights
• Access to Sound Money
• Freedom to Trade Internationally
• Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business
The HFI finds a strong relationship between human freedom and democracy and suggests that freedom plays an important role in human well-being.
Women-specific freedoms, as measured by five indicators in the index, are strongest in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia and are least protected in the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.
According to the ranking it would appear that Sierra Leoneans generally enjoyed more freedoms and civil liberties like freedom of speech, movement, economic, rule of law ,security under the former APC government than they are currently under the SLPP government.
TECHNOLOGY needs assessment and transfer established at the Fourteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 14) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to scale up technology transfer in countries was instrumental and remains noble.
Technology needs assessment can be defined as a set of country-driven, participatory activities leading to the identification, selected and implementation of environmentally sound technologies to decrease carbon dioxide (C02) emissions (mitigation) or to decrease vulnerability to climate change (adaptation) in developing countries.
Stemming out from these noble pathways are the roles of innovative technologies designed to foster climate smart agriculture (CSA) and the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) for development.
Notwithstanding these presumed developments, the majority of small-to-medium farmers are still engrossed in manual labour with less technologies and no machinery designed to ease their laborious situations.
When the idea of technology transfer was mooted, deliberated and passed, it was believed that the majority of small-to-medium scale farmers in developing countries would sufficiently benefit from innovative technologies introduced in their agricultural sector.
Prices of basic goods gallop every week as the value of the Zimbabwean dollar continues to tumble, pushing official annual inflation to 785.6 per cent in April.
A loaf of bread went up 36 percent last month and last week a 10-kilo (22-pound) sack of cornmeal jumped 30 percent.
Mnangagwa, who took power in 2017 following a military coup pledging to revive the moribund economy, now blames the economic malaise on unnamed \"political detractors\".
The Zimbabwean authorities have in recent weeks targeted opposition activists and lawyers in what is seen as a tactic to strike fear into the population.
University of Zimbabwe's political scientist Eldred Masunungure said the situation \"points to volatility in the country, a comprehensively volatile situation both politically and in the economy where it's very visible as it affects the livelihoods of the vast majority of the people.\"
South Africa has an abundance of amazing delicacies to offer. This Gin & Tonic Cocktail with Fynbos honey and Spekboom throws everything this country has to offer into the tastiest cocktail ever.
Criminals are out in full force over December. Here are a few safety tips for using ATMs and online banking this festive season.
(Reuters) – Dan Evans beat Kyle Edmund in the final of the Battle of the Brits exhibition tournament yesterday.
The 30-year-old won 6-3 6-2 in the behind-closed-doors event played at the National Tennis Centre in west London.
Evans had beaten former world number one Andy Murray in Saturday’s semi-final.
The 33-year-old Murray, who was playing his first event since November, withdrew from his third-place playoff match against Cameron Norrie after a busy week.
Murray’s brother Jamie organised the charity tournament to help provide some competitive action while players await the resumption of the season which was closed down in March because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Any sanctions on US companies would be a “last resort” because China “is in desperate need of foreign investment from rich countries for both economic and political reasons”.
Meanwhile, China prevented US airline flights into the country for more than two months and, after the US imposed visa restrictions on Chinese journalists, it expelled American journalists.
Although China didn’t identify companies on the list, the Global Times has cited a source close to the Chinese government as saying US bellwethers such as Apple and Qualcomm could be targeted.
Now, in what appears to be a staged de-escalation, China gave US passenger carriers permission to operate four weekly flights to the country and earlier this month, the Trump administration matched the move by also authorising four flights from Chinese airlines.
After the US designated five Chinese media companies as “foreign missions”, China revoked press credentials for three Wall Street Journal staff members over an article with a headline describing China as the “real sick man of Asia”.
During a recent meeting organized by Anchor of Hope Ministries, a local, faith-based nonprofit assisting the formerly incarcerated, Holmes stated that the Black church has historically been centered to meet the community’s needs in a variety of ways.
“Black churches were ‘one-stop shops’ because other means of access to community services were off limits,” Holmes said.
Holmes pointed to a recent Pew Research Center study that concluded that Blacks still have close ties to churches, as 47 percent of Black adults surveyed said that they attended religious services, compared to 39 percent of Latinx and 34 percent of Whites.
Holmes explained that even though church leaders are not face-to-face with members, they should still be on the watch — via phone calls or internet services — for any signs of abuse that may be triggered by the current stay-at-home order.
“Faith leaders clearly have a key role to play in offering comfort and care to Los Angeles County at a time when illness, isolation and economic hardship come together to burden so many residents and communities,” the department writes in its “Guidance for Faith-Based Organizations” piece.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the state is facing a “massive outbreak” in the coronavirus pandemic and that some new local restrictions may be needed to protect hospital space for new patients.
In a series of midday interviews with television stations, Abbott said Texas would again pass 5,000 new coronavirus cases and more than 4,000 hospital patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
With new cases and the number of COVID-19 patients rising rapidly, “We are looking at greater restrictions and some could be localized,” Abbott said Wednesday without detailing what those would be or where.
Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, the largest pediatric hospital in the U.S. said Tuesday that it was admitting adult patients across its campuses to free up more hospital bed space in the Houston area.
Even with the hint of new restrictions to protect hospital space, Abbott said in a separate interview with KDFM-TV in Beaumont that hospital executives have assured him that they will be able to handle the rising numbers of patients.
Clermont’s plight is shared by many in Haiti and, more broadly, across the Caribbean and Latin America.
In Brazil and Mexico, which make up more than half the region’s population, populist governments went against scientific opinion and downplayed the threat of the virus, continuing to hold political rallies and resisting lockdowns.
Experts say the true scale of the virus’ spread in the region is likely much worse than reported as many countries have failed to implement rigorous testing programs for practical or ideological reasons.
In Haiti, which has a population of around 11 million, the spread has outpaced its testing capacity so much that its coronavirus task force declared that symptoms were enough to diagnose COVID-19, the illness caused by virus.
Less than 9% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean – and just 4.5 % in Haiti – is aged 65 and above.
As Ethiopia's 2021 election nears, a territorial dispute has flared between Amhara and Tigray, two northern regions.
Tigray and Amhara, the powerhouse regions of northern Ethiopia, are locked in a bitter land dispute exacerbated by national politicking that pits their elites against each other.
In late 2018, in north-western Amhara, local Amhara killed hundreds and displaced thousands of Qimant, an ethnic minority pursuing greater autonomy within the region, amid regional officials' claims that Tigray's ruling party is funding the self-rule campaign.
Were Tigray willing to instead grant political representation and language rights to minority populations in the territories, some Amhara officials have suggested this could help lead to an acceptable outcome.
The Amhara not only assert historical ownership of the land but also charge that TPLF rebels killed and uprooted Amhara in the disputed areas, thus altering the demographic balance in favour of Tigrinya speakers and laying the basis for a TPLF claim to the lands under Ethiopia's ethnic federal system.
[UN News] The dire shortage of food, water, fuel and cash in the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia is seriously affecting people there, including aid workers, the United Nations reported on Tuesday, citing its humanitarian affairs office, OCHA.
Donovan Carter has cut and carved out a niche for himself in the settee-making industry for 27 years.
Carter’s Red Pond, St Catherine, factory produces beds and settees to walk-in retail customers and commercial interests like Singer Jamaica.
“I am glad to be involved in my own production of fine Jamaican settees and beds,” said Carter.
Carter’s workforce of 13 involves carpenters, carvers, upholsterers, varnishers, drivers, and administrators.
“It is the love for self-management and the contribution to the development of the community that give me the sheer determination to continue,” Carter told The Gleaner.
