Latest Articles

• Obama slams 'politics of division' on return to campaign trail

  Oct 20, 2017 by Admin / 358 Views

  

  Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail on Thursday, railing against the "politics of division" after keeping a low profile and avoiding direct confrontation with his White House successor since leaving office.

  Speaking at a rally in New Jersey to support the Democratic Party candidate for governor, the 56-year-old former president took aim at the fear and bitterness that marked the 2016 campaign which led to Donald Trump's presidency.

  "What we can't have is the same old politics of division that we have seen so many times before, that dates back centuries," Obama said at the event in Newark for Phil Murphy.

  "Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. That's folks looking 50 years back," Obama added. "It's the 21st century, not the 19th century."

  Obama later appeared at an event in Richmond to support Ralph Northam, his party's gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, at which he obliquely criticized the way Trump gained the White House.

  "If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you're not going to be able to govern them. You won't be able to unite them later," Obama said.

  "We are at our best not when we are trying to put people down, but when we are trying to lift everybody up," he said.

  Voters in both New Jersey and Virginia will decide the contests on November 7, one year after Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton and stormed into the White House on a wave of anti-establishment fury.

  The races are potential indicators of voter sentiment ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, which will be a major test for Trump and his Republican Party.

  University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said the New Jersey and Virginia governor races are the only "big elections" for 2017.

  "What's at stake is bragging rights headed into the 2018 midterm elections," Sabato told AFP.

  Obama has remained largely detached from the political debate since leaving office on January 20, in keeping with presidential tradition.

  Trump has meanwhile used his first nine months in the White House to methodically demolish key Obama administration policies.

  After three months of vacation Obama began writing his memoirs. He has said little in public and granted almost no interviews.

  Read more »

• Blatter says he is going to World Cup at Putin's invitation

  Oct 20, 2017 by Admin / 318 Views

  

  FIFA's disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter has told AFP he will go to next year's World Cup in Russia at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin, despite being banned from football.

  "I will go to the World Cup in Russia. I received an invitation from President Putin," the 81-year-old said in an interview.

  A Kremlin spokesman said Russia will "be happy to see (Blatter) in Moscow".

  "You know that Putin and Blatter have for a long time been, you could say, friends", Dmitri Peskov told reporters.

  "The World Cup is a great celebration of football and everyone who is invited will be welcome, and old friends will also be welcome," the Kremlin spokesman further said.

  Blatter told AFP that Michel Platini, the ex-UEFA president who is banned from football over corruption, had also been invited to the tournament by Putin.

  But according to one of his close allies Platini "hasn't received an invitation from Putin to go to the World Cup and doesn't know what he will be doing next summer".

  Blatter, who led world football's governing body for 17 years, was thrown out of the sport in 2015 at the height of a massive corruption scandal.

  FIFA's ethics committee has suspended him from all football-related activities for six years after finding him guilty of accepting an improper 2 million Swiss franc ($2.1 million, 1.8 million euros) payment from then-UEFA chief Platini.

  Read more »

• 'Three killed' in Togo opposition clashes

  Oct 19, 2017 by Admin / 406 Views

  

  Togo's opposition on Thursday said three people were killed and dozens more injured as gangs of youths clashed with security forces trying to prevent the latest anti-government protest in the capital.

  Opposition spokesman Brigitte Adjamagbo-Johnson told reporters "the provisional toll at 3:30 pm (1530 GMT) is three shot dead in Lome", with 44 shot and wounded, and a further 36 beaten up.

  Togo's security minister, Colonel Yark Damehame, denied the claims, however, saying no-one was killed.

  The streets of the coastal capital were largely deserted in anticipation of the rally, which the opposition refused to cancel despite a government ban on weekday marches on security grounds.

  Demonstrators planned to march to the offices of the West African bloc ECOWAS to demand the resignation of President Faure Gnassingbe -- the latest in two months of mounting protests against his regime.

  Gnassingbe has been president since 2005 and is the scion of Africa's longest-ruling dynasty that has been in power in Togo since 1968.

  The opposition wants the constitution changed and the introduction of a limit of two, five-year terms for presidents.

  Colonel Damehame said of the opposition claims that three people were killed on Thursday: "No deaths have been brought to our attention."

  At least four people were reported to have been killed in Lome and the country's second city, Sokode, during clashes between protesters, police and soldiers on Wednesday.

  But Damehame said they had previously been announced on Tuesday, blaming the confusion on the health services in Sokode being overwhelmed.

  "No death was recorded yesterday (Wednesday) in Sokode," he told reporters.

  - Shut down -

  In Lome, most shops were still shut by midday (1200 GMT) and the streets were virtually empty apart from the occasional motorbike-taxi, an AFP correspondent said.

  "Activity is at a standstill after days of disruption by the marches," said one mobile phone vendor in Deckon, the city's commercial hub.

  "What's happening is weighing heavily on us. The politicians need to talk to find a solution to this crisis."

  Read more »

• White supremacist shouted down at Florida college speech

  Oct 19, 2017 by Admin / 331 Views

  

  Hundreds of protesters shouted down white supremacist leader Richard Spencer on Thursday at a university in Florida, forcing him to leave the stage without delivering his planned speech.

  Officials were so fearful of disturbances that Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency ahead of the speech by Spencer, an organizer of a white supremacist rally that erupted in deadly violence in Charlottesville earlier this year.

  The order enabled the governor to bring in law enforcement personnel from across the state to keep order in the town of Gainesville.

  Only around 30 supporters of the controversial white nationalist made it into the University of Florida auditorium, massively outnumbered by protesters who chanted "No more Spencer!"

  Spencer has gained notoriety as a leader of the "alt-right" movement, a loose collection of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups that staged the incendiary protest in Charlottesville, Virginia in August.

  A 32-year-old woman was killed when a Nazi sympathizer plowed his car into counter-protesters, and two police officers died in a helicopter crash as they were responding to the violence.

  As he stepped onto the stage, Spencer was greeted with a chorus of angry and profanity-laced jeers and chants, drowning out his voice.

  Read more »

• Ebola-like Marburg virus kills two in Uganda: official

  Oct 19, 2017 by Admin / 317 Views

   

  

  wo people have died from the Marburg virus in eastern Uganda, in the country's first outbreak of the deadly Ebola-like pathogen in three years, the health ministry said Thursday.

  "Blood samples were taken from two people who have since died and were found positive for Marburg", Uganda's health ministry permanent secretary, Dr. Diana Atwine told AFP.

  She said a team of experts had been sent to Kween district, near the Kenyan border, to contain the virus.

  "At moment we don't know if there are other people apart from the dead who have contracted the disease because the health experts are still investigating in addition to sensitising the population about the dangers of Marburg and we call for public vigilance," she added.

  One individual was a male hunter who died on September 25. His 50-year-old sister died on October 11.

  "The second victim had taken care of her brother during his sickness and burial preparation rituals when we suspect she contracted the disease," Health Minister Ruth Achieng said.

  The two are the first recorded cases of Marburg in Kween district.

  According to the Uganda Virus Research Institute, the first known case of Marburg in the country was in the western district of Kamwenge in 2007.

  A 2012 outbreak killed 10 people and in 2014 one man died.

  The Marburg virus is one of the most deadly known pathogens. Like Ebola, it is a haemorrhagic fever -- it causes severe bleeding, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. It has a 21-day incubation period.

  Like Ebola, the Marburg virus is also transmitted via contact with bodily fluids and fatality rates range from 25 to 80 percent.

  The name of the disease comes from the city of Marburg in central Germany, where the virus was first identified in 1967 among workers who had been exposed to infected African green monkeys at a research lab.

  Read more »