Author: Amnewsworld

Shiite Muslims take part in a mourning ritual in Iraq’s southern city of Basra, during the Muslim month of Muharram in the lead-up to Ashura. AMN/News Report/Mecca.

Authorities in Uganda have suspended the work of a high profile LGBTQ rights group, calling it an ‘illegal entity.’ Sexual Minorities Uganda has been the nation’s most prominent support group for LGBTQ people since 2004 but its leader, Frank Mugisha, said on Saturday the authorities had told him to suspend activities due to a lack of documentation. He said the case against the group stems from the name itself, which the registrar of companies considers to be unsuitable. A judge agreed and the group is awaiting the judgement of a higher court. Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited in Uganda under…

The Malian army and “white soldiers” were involved in the deaths of 33 civilians, including 29 Mauritanians and four Malians in Mali according to a report by United Nations experts consulted by AFP on Friday. The disappearance of these civilians on 5 March in Robinet El Ataye, in the Segou region near the Mauritanian border, had caused a stir in Mali and Mauritania. Nouakchott accused the Malian army of “recurrent criminal acts” against Mauritanian citizens in this border region. Bamako had said that nothing implicated its army. The two countries had launched a joint investigation, the results of which had…

When Shieh Jhy-Wey looks out his office window, he can see the German Cathedral in Berlin. From where he sits in the Taipei Representative Office, it is less than a half-hour walk to the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. Yet the two offices are worlds apart. The visit to Taiwan by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has escalated tensions between Beijing, Washington and Taipei. Shieh told DW how tensions are not merely between Taiwan and China, rather “two value systems”: dictatorship and democracy. Taiwan’s representative in Berlin may not be called an ‘ambassador’ German foreign policy faces a dilemma: China is Germany’s…

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifted off from West Texas, sending the capsule on a 10-minute flight with six crew members. The flight included Coby Cotton, co-founder of Dude Perfect; Mario Ferreira, a Portuguese entrepreneur; Vanessa O’Brien, a British-American mountaineer; Clint Kelly III, a technology leader; Sara Sabry, an Egyptian engineer; and Steve Young, a telecommunications executive. Their automated capsule flew into space, providing a few minutes of weightlessness before being parachuted into the desert. The company is working in Cape Canaveral on a larger orbital class rocket, named New Glenn after the first American to orbit the world, John…

Raila Amolo Odinga, a veteran Kenyan political leader and one-time prime minister, has long cast himself as an anti-establishment firebrand, despite belonging to one of the country’s top political dynasties. But his decision to strike an alliance with his arch-rival, President Uhuru Kenyatta, and secure the ruling party’s backing as he vies yet again for the top job in the August 9 elections, risks taking the shine off his brand. The Kenyatta and Odinga families have dominated Kenyan politics since the country won independence from Britain in 1963. Uhuru Kenyatta’s father Jomo was the East African nation’s first president while…

In Senegal; it is the first time since the West African nation’s independence in 1960 that the ruling party’s group loses its absolute majority in Parliament. It will have to rely on other forces in parliament to pass legislation. The opposition had hoped the elections would impose a cohabitation, or divided government, on Sall and curb any ambitions he may have for a third term. And it seems to have succeeded. The main opposition coalition Yewwi Askane Wi won 56 seats, while its ally Wallu Senegal won 24 seats. Some seven million Senegalese were eligible to vote in the election…

For years, selling eggs was a joyless business for Danai Bvochora, as most of the money she made went to cover minibus fares to the market in a rural area of Zimbabwe. That was until an earth-brown solar-powered electric tricycle changed things for the better. “We used to carry loads on our heads before. The tricycle has lessened the burden,” said the 47-year-old from Domboshava, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. She carefully loads eggs onto the tricycle’s trailer before embarking on a bumpy eight-kilometre journey to the market. “We even use it to go to…

Carrying candles, singing and displaying a Congolese flag on the floor, members of different social movements and politicians remembered the 36 people who died in the last few days during protests against the United Nations mission in the country, MONUSCO. The group has demanded justice be applied in and outside Congo, against those who killed the protesters. “We are making a certain connection (with this vigil) with the memories of all these victims who fell innocently, who fell in an awful and cruel way. And that is the reason for our mourning tonight. And we believe that justice must be…

Everyone who moves through downtown Atlanta today passes places where innocent Black men and women were pulled from trolleys, shot in their workplaces, chased through the streets and beaten to death by a mob of 10,000 white men and boys. But few have been taught about the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, which shaped the city’s geography, economy, society and power structure in lasting ways. Much like the Red Summer of 1919 in the South and Northeast and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 in Oklahoma would years later, the white-on-Black violence in Atlanta shattered dreams of racial harmony and forced…