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(CNN) —Thefuneral of Pope Francisgave Catholics across the globe the chance tobid farewellto a beloved pontiff – and for world leaders to rub shoulders at a fraught time for international diplomacy. More than 250,000 people packed into St. Peter’s Square for Saturday’s service, the Vatican said, with members of the public there to mourn along […]
The post Trump, Julian Assange and 250,000 others. Who was at Pope Francis’ funeral? appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.
Abiy's government and the regional one run by the Tigray People's Liberation Front each consider the other illegitimate.
\t There was no immediate word from the three AU envoys, former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano and former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe. AU spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo did not say whether they can meet with TPLF leaders, something Abiy's office has rejected.
\"``Not possible,'' senior Ethiopian official Redwan Hussein said in a message to the AP. ``\"Above all, TPLF leadership is still at large.'' He called reports that the TPLF had appointed an envoy to discuss an immediate cease-fire with the international community ``masquerading.''
\t Fighting reportedly remained well outside the Tigray capital of Mekele, a densely populated city of a half-million people who have been warned by the Ethiopian government that they will be shown ``no mercy'' if they don't distance themselves from the region's leaders.
\t Tigray has been almost entirely cut off from the outside world since Nov. 4, when Abiy announced a military offensive in response to a TPLF attack on a federal army base.
That makes it difficult to verify claims about the fighting, but humanitarians have said at least hundreds of people have been killed.
\t The fighting threatens to destabilize Ethiopia, which has been described as the linchpin of the strategic Horn of Africa.
\t With transport links cut, food and other supplies are running out in Tigray, home to 6 million people, and the United Nations has asked for immediate and unimpeded access for aid.
AP
[IPS] Khartoum -- Earlier this year, when heavy rains caused massive flooding in Sudan, a three-month state of emergency was declared in September. The floods which began in July, were the worst the country experienced in the last three decades and affected some 830,000 people, including 125,000 refugees and internally displaced people.
The Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel was built to sequester cardinals during papal elections. It's now sequestering soon-to-be cardinals in town for this weekend’s ceremony to get their red hats: A handful are in protective coronavirus quarantine, confined to their rooms on Vatican orders and getting meals delivered to their doors.
The Um Raquba refugee camp in eastern Sudan once housed Ethiopians fleeing famine, but now life has flooded back into the isolated camp as refugees seek safe haven from the Tigray conflict.
\"A month ago, this was just a piece of desert, but now it's turned back into a town,\" camp director Abdel Basset Abdel Ghani told AFP.
The sound of hammering and digging rings out as people build temporary huts, while elsewhere children take lessons in makeshift classrooms.
Young people kick a football around in the dust while others line up to refill containers of water.
More than 44,000 refugees have crossed into Sudan since fighting broke out in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region on November 4, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
The rapidly growing Um Raquba refugee camp, located some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border, once housed refugees who fled Ethiopia's 1983-85 famine that killed more than a million people.
It was closed 20 years ago but reopened for a second time earlier this month.
Tasfai Burhani and his wife, who arrived Thursday from the Hamdayit transit centre in neighbouring Kassala province, are among those building a hut for themselves.
\"For now, we'll live here. After that, we'll see,\" said the farmer, aged around 20.
- Rapid expansion -
Authorities have assigned them a 200 square metre (over 2,100 square feet) area and have provided them with rudimentary materials and tools to make the wicker shelters.
Others less inclined to build the structures themselves or who are convinced their stay will be brief have opted for white tents distributed by UNHCR.
Um Raquba is Sudan's only official refugee settlement.
Other camps near the border are transit centres where new arrivals are registered before being directed towards Um Raquba.
The camp now houses almost 9,700 people, according to the UN refugee agency.
Some 2,100 huts have been set up since the settlement was reopened this month, camp director Abdel Ghani said.
Toilets have been put in place across the camp and UN children's agency UNICEF has installed water tanks.
\"Luckily the region has a lot of (underground) water, even though the infrastructure is poor,\" Abdel Ghani said.
He said the camp can accommodate \"20,000 people, but the number of arrivals here is constantly going up.\"
An additional 3,000 huts are planned to fill the gap in demand, he added.
- Makeshift schools -
Shelters were initially concentrated in the middle of Um Raquba, but now extend for a radius of up to a kilometre, AFP correspondents said.
At the centre of the settlement, international organisations have opened offices that people visit in the hope of receiving aid.
Small vegetable stands have sprung up too, and while some refugees prefer to prepare their food themselves with ingredients distributed by the United Nations, most queue up three times a day for meals from the World Food Programme's tents.
Sitting on the ground in one hut, around 50 young children were excited to be back at school after the trauma of fleeing conflict
[Nation] Kenya could face its worst locust invasion in mid-December after a cyclone that allows the pests to rapidly mature hit Somalia.
… history Saturday, becoming the first Black American to earn the rank of … an important recognition that the African American, the Black Catholic community, is … being a “voice for the African American community in the Pope’s …
Two cardinal-designates, from Brunei and the Philippines, attended the consistory via video-conference amid COVID-19 travel restrictions.
Adewale \"Wally\" Adeyemo will be the deputy Treasury secretary, making the Nigerian-born Obama era official the first Black person to ever serve in that role.
[IPS] Rome -- The recent meeting of the G20 - scheduled to take place in Riyadh but held virtually due to the Coronavirus pandemic - has been an eloquent example of how the world is drifting, in a crisis of leadership.
[RFI] The capital of Tigray has been hit by heavy shelling as the Ethiopian government of Abiy Ahmed began its offensive against the dissident leaders of the country's northern region.
[UNHCR] This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch -- to whom quoted text may be attributed -- at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
[Daily Trust] The United Nations has stated that over 110 farmers were killed by Boko Haram insurgents on Saturday night in Zabarmari village, a rice farming community in Jere Local Government Area of Borno State.
There was mounting pressure this week from the international community to end the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a rebel stronghold in the nation’s northern […]
President Trump continued to spout baseless claims of election fraud, including that the FBI and Justice Department helped Biden win the election.
[Govt of SA] A3 + 1 Joint Statement delivered by Ambassador Jerry Matjila of the Permanent Mission of South Africa, to the United Nations, during the Security Council briefing on the situation in Somalia, 23 November 2020
Pope Francis has created 13 new cardinals, including a first African-American Archbishop from Washington, putting his personal stamp on the body that will one day choose his successor.
Under the dome of the St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, the cardinals knelt one by one at the feet of the head of the Vatican, who placed quadrangular scarlet cap, or biretta, on their heads.
The new cardinals are a diverse group, with members hailing from Italy, Malta, the Philippines, Chile, Brunei, Mexico and the United States. And for the first time, the cardinals included an African-American. The 72-year-old Archbishop of Washington, Wilton Gregory, said he was a \"symbolic individual\" for being made the first African-American cardinal.
This reflects not only the changing face of the church of 1.3 billion faithful, but also the Jesuit pope's belief in priests focused on the world's poor.
Since Francis' election in 2013, the Argentine pope, the first from the Americas, has created 95 new cardinals in ceremonies known as consistories.
Those named by Francis now make up the majority of those cardinals under the age of 80 who will elect his successor.
That ups the chances that the pope's quest to make the Roman Catholic Church more inclusive, transparent, and more focused on defending the most vulnerable members of society, may continue after his passing.
During the ceremony, The Pope warned the new cardinals not to be seduced by their new \"eminence\" and stray from being \"close to the people\".
\"The scarlet of a cardinal’s robes, which is the color of blood, can, for a worldly spirit, become the color of a secular 'eminence’. When you feel that, you will be off the road\", he said.
[RFI] In its message for World Aids Day 2020, the United Nations called for global solidarity and warned that in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the world cannot afford to make the same mistakes it made in the fight against HIV, when millions in developing countries died waiting for treatment.
Dear Editor,
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child highlights the need for a few things with regards to children.
The article We must educate children on their rights appeared first on Stabroek News.
[New Times] Urban planners have disclosed that a storm water management plan being devised could be the sustainable solution to manage floods that have ravaged the different suburbs of the City of Kigali.
“Let’s think of so many types of corruption in the life of the priesthood,” Francis told the new cardinals, deviating from his prepared text. If they think of themselves so grandly, “you won’t be pastors close to the people, you’ll just be ‘Eminence.’ And …
Opposition Senator Dr Floyd Morris has been elected to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.\tThe election was held Monday afternoon.\tThe committee is a body of independent experts who monitor the...
(AP)- Ethiopia’s military has gained “full control” of the capital of the defiant Tigray region, the army announced today, after the Tigray government reported that the city of half a million people was being “heavily...
By Reuters 1h ago Share this article: ShareTweetShareShareShareEmailShare By Philip Pullella Vatican City – Pope Francis on Saturday installed 13 new cardinals, including the first African-American to hold the high rank, further expanding the pontiff’s impact on the group that will one day elect his successor. The cardinals were installed in a ceremony, known as […]
(Jamaica Observer) How does a shy, little, 'lisp-tongue' girl from Kingston end up as a Supreme Court judge in New York, beating back cancer and COVID-19 along the way?
The article Elected to NY Supreme Court: Neither lisp, cancer, nor COVID-19 stopped Jamaican Carol Sharpe appeared first on Stabroek News.
[Nation] Some 34 million women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa could live in abject poverty in the next decade as a result of effects of Covid-19, according to new data on empowerment interventions.
Archbishop Wilton Gregory was in quarantine in Rome Friday, just hours away from making history as the South Side native will become the first Black American cardinal in the history of the Catholic Church Saturday.
Some $150 million is needed to tackle the refugee crisis in Sudan, the UN Refugee Agency boss said Saturday. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians have fled from the embattled northern Tigray region to seek refuge in Sudan.
Filipo Grandi, who said this during a visit to the camp, appealed for donor support.
''Five hundred people per day, this is what we got in the last few days. Five, six hundred refugees coming into the country per day. In rich countries, this would be bring governments down. In here, the government of Sudan has kept the border open. UNHCR, the UN and humanitarian community need about 150 million dollars for the next six months to help the government of Sudan manage this refugee crisis\", he said.
The Tigray conflict broke out on November 4 between Ethiopia's federal forces and leaders of the region's ruling party.
Sudan has since become a refugee for over 43,000 Ethiopian refugees fleeing from the intense fighting.
The East African nation is accommodating the mass refugee influx as it struggles with its own economic crisis. The country is also going through a fragile transition since the April 2019 ouster of long serving leader Omar al-Bashir, after unprecedented mass protests, triggered by economic hardship.
Washington DC archbishop Wilton Gregory, 72, becomes first African-American cardinal.
… will formally become the first Black American to become a cardinal this … left and the rest were African American students."
Gregory's …
Article: What Are We Gonna Do Now To Save Our Democracy? - Now that Trump is toast. It's time we got back to normal again. Normal Bates, Motel 6. Mama rockin' away in the fruit cellar, like it's 60s all over again. Her smokin' bones. Hmph. No, but seriously, let's figure this stuff out. Together.
