WORLD - The African Mirror

Jun

02

2024

Mediators urge Israel and Hamas to finalise Biden’s Gaza peace plan

WORLD

GAZA conflict mediators urged Israel and Hamas to finalise a ceasefire and hostage release deal outlined by U.S. President Joe Biden that they said would bring immediate relief to people in Gaza and to the hostages and their families. Israel has said there will be no formal end to the war as long as Hamas retains power, raising questions of timing and interpretation over the truce offer, which the Palestinian faction has provisionally welcomed. Biden said on Friday that Israel had proposed a deal involving an initial six-week ceasefire with a partial Israeli military withdrawal and the release of some…

Jun

02

2024

By The African Mirror

Myanmar’s Tin Oo, pro-democracy general who co-founded Suu Kyi’s party, dies at 97

WORLD

TIN Oo, a towering figure in Myanmar's pro-democracy movement and close ally of detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, died on Saturday at age 97, political associates and close friends said. Tin Oo had a pivotal role with Suu Kyi in the 1988 creation of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which suffered two decades of persecution over its non-violent struggle against military dictatorship. The NLD ruled Myanmar for five years until its overthrow in a 2021 coup, weeks after its second successive landslide election win during a decade of tentative democracy. A former military commander who turned into a…

Jun

01

2024

By JAMES MACKENZIE

Israel completes combat operations in part of north Gaza, military says

WORLD

ISRAELI forces have ended operations in north Gaza's Jabalia area after days of intense fighting and over 200 airstrikes, while probing further into Rafah in south Gaza, targeting what they say is the last major redoubt of Hamas battalions. Israeli troops found caches of rocket launchers and other weapons, as well as Hamas tunnel shafts in the centre of Rafah, the military said on Friday, pressing an offensive to break up militant combat units it says are hunkered down in the city on the border with Egypt. In a statement on more than two weeks of fierce fighting in Jabalia,…

Jun

01

2024

By LUC COHEN, HELEN COSTER and ANDY SULLIVAN

Trump says he will appeal historic conviction

WORLD

DONALD Trump said that he would appeal the guilty verdict that made him the first U.S. president convicted of a crime, though he will have to wait until after his sentencing on July 11 before taking that step. In rambling remarks at the Trump Tower lobby in Manhattan where he announced his first presidential run in 2015, Trump repeated his complaints that the trial was an attempt to hobble his comeback White House bid and warned that it showed no American was safe from politically motivated prosecution. "If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone," Trump…

Jun

01

2024

By THOMAS ESCRITT

German police shoot knifeman who attacked far-right rally

WORLD

GERMAN police said they shot and wounded a man armed with a knife who attacked a right-wing demonstration in the southwestern city of Mannheim. Social media footage showed a bearded man in glasses attacking people in the city's central Marktplatz square with a knife. One person appears to be stabbed in the leg and a policeman who tries to intervene appears to be cut in the neck. Another policeman then shoots the attacker. "A firearm was used against the attacker," Mannheim police said in a statement. No information was available on the identity or motives of the attacker and police…

May

31

2024

By LUC COHEN, JACK QUEEN and ANDY SULLIVAN

Jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts at hush money trial

WORLD

DONALD Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. After deliberations over two days, the 12-member jury announced it had found Trump guilty on all 34 counts he faced. Unanimity was required for any verdict. Trump watched the jurors dispassionately as they were polled to confirm the guilty verdict. Justice Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11, days before the July 15 start of the Republican National Convention expected to formally…

May

31

2024

By DAN WILLIAMS

Israeli airstrike on Rafah kills 12 Palestinians, Gaza medics say

WORLD

ISRAELI forces killed at least 12 Palestinians in a dawn airstrike on Rafah in southern Gaza and fighting raged in several other areas of the coastal enclave, Gaza medics said. Israel pressed on with its offensive on Rafah a day after saying its forces had taken control of a buffer zone along the nearby border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, giving it effective authority over Gaza's entire land frontier. It said the buffer zone's capture had cut off a route used by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas to smuggle arms into Gaza during more than seven months of the war, which…

Dec

01

2025

By ALEXANDROS KOUTSOUKIS

Ukraine’s peace talks reveal the risks of replacing diplomats with dealmakers

WORLD

RECENT reports about the role of Donald Trump’s special envoy, American businessman Steve Witkoff, in the Ukraine peace negotiations have raised wider questions about why political leaders turn to business figures in high-stakes diplomacy – and whether this can ever work. A leaked recording of Witkoff advising Russian officials on how to present their proposals to Washington has intensified concern about the direction of the process. Some see it as a symptom of the US president’s personalised foreign policy, while others view the process as a sign of a broader shift away from professional diplomacy altogether. Diplomacy is often portrayed…

May

31

2024

By SAKSHI DAYAL, TANVI MEHTA and ANUSHREE FADNAVIS

Animals collapse, water shortages bite amid India’s searing heat

WORLD

ANIMALS collapsed, people jumped on water tankers with buckets amid shortages and government employees changed their work hours as blistering summer heat kept its grip on north India. Although Thursday's readings were marginally lower in Delhi than the previous day when one area recorded an all-time high of 52.9 degrees Celsius (127.22 Fahrenheit), the region still saw temperatures touching 47 C (116.6 F). Delhi, which has a population of 20 million, recorded its first heat-related death on Wednesday, with a 40-year-old labourer dying of heatstroke, local media reported. Authorities said they are investigating if the 52.9 C reading in the Mungeshpur neighbourhood on Wednesday…

May

30

2024

By TIM REID

Trump’s hush money trial: how would a verdict affect the 2024 election?

WORLD

JURORS hearing the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president began their deliberations in Donald Trump's hush money case, weighing a verdict with potentially big implications for the 2024 White House race. Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment that bought the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. Daniels had threatened to go public with her account of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, a liaison he denies. The New York case is widely seen as the least consequential of the four criminal prosecutions Trump faces. But it…