Global

US stepping up airstrikes this week to support Afghan forces

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, attends at a ceremony where Gen. Scott Miller, who has served as America’s top commander in Afghanistan since 2018, handed over command, at Resolute Support headquarters, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 12, 2021. The United States is a step closer to ending a 20-year military

Read More

EU cuts cash for Kenya Defence Forces in Somalia by half

Treasury Principal Secretary Julius Muia. By EDWIN MUTAI The European Union (EU) and its partners cut by half the budget for troops fighting Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia after a secret partial withdrawal of Kenyan soldiers. Treasury told Parliament Monday that Kenya received Sh4.5 billion from African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) in the 12-month period

Read More

Biden, Iraqi PM to announce end of US combat mission in Iraq

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi poses in his office during an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, July 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) By AAMER MADHANI, ROBERT BURNS and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi are expected to announce on Monday that they’ve come

Read More

Tunisian democracy in crisis after president ousts government

Crowds gather on the street after Tunisia’s president suspended parliament, in La Marsa, near Tunis, Tunisia July 26, 2021, in this still image obtained from a social media video. Layli Foroudi/via REUTERS Tunisia faced its biggest crisis in a decade of democracy on Monday after President Kais Saied ousted the government and froze the activities

Read More

Putin says Russian navy can carry out ‘unpreventable strike’ if needed

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu attend the Navy Day parade in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 25, 2021. Sputnik/Aleksey Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS By Reuters MOSCOW, July 25 (Reuters) – The Russian navy can detect any enemy and launch an “unpreventable strike” if needed, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, weeks after a

Read More

Podcast celebrates Barry’s Welsh political icon who fought Apartheid

Abdulrahim Abby Farah By Rachel Nurse A NEW podcast from the Welsh Political Icons series celebrates the life of Barry-born Welsh-Somali diplomat Abdulrahim Abby Farah, who led the United Nations mission to South Africa to end the country’s apartheid regime. Farah was born in Barry in 1919, living on Thompson Street and attending Gladstone Primary

Read More

Foreign Office is ‘complicit in British man’s Somalia torture’

David Taylor’s son has begged foreign secretary Dominic Raab, above, to intervene in his father’s case. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock By Mark Townsend ‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers,

Read More

America may be creating a power vacuum from Somalia to Afghanistan

President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign event for Virginia democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe at Lubber Run Park, Friday, July 23, 2021, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) By SETH J. FRANTZMAN The US has broken its “long silence” with new airstrikes “against those who exploit the vacuum left by its withdrawal.” Reports from

Read More

Rights groups call on Biden to condemn Egypt’s abuses, halt military aid

Members of Congress have criticised Biden for continuing arms sales to Egypt as it continues to target Egyptian activists (AFP) By Middle East Eye Advocates are urging US administration not to issue a waiver that would send $300m in military aid to Cairo More than a dozen rights groups have urged the Biden administration to

Read More

Nigeria receives first six light attack planes from United States

Credit: CGTN/ Nigeria receives first six light attack planes from the United States Source: Personal Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Broadcast Media, Buhari Sale. By Reuters Nigeria received its first six A-29 Super Tucano planes, the air force said on Thursday, four years after the United States agreed to sell the West African country

Read More