WORLD - The African Mirror

Mar

11

2026

As Trump threatens to force change, what do Cubans want and what do they fear?

WORLD

AFTER launching the US-Israeli war on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Donald Trump explicitly said he would turn to Cuba next, sparking anxiety over what the future holds for millions of Cubans living on the island. Since the US attack on Venezuela (Cuba’s key regional ally) and its abduction of President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January, Trump has ramped up the pressure, imposing a strict blockade on oil shipments that is depriving Cuba’s socialist government of the fuel it needs to keep the country functioning. The US has also increasingly pressured foreign countries to stop hiring Cuban…

Mar

11

2026

By OLIVER ALFRED GUIDETTI

Epstein files reveal the power – and peril – of online sleuths doing the government’s work

WORLD

A large release of important documents once meant teams of journalists staying back, working through piles of records late into the night. Today, it triggers something closer to a public audit. The January 30 publication of more than three million documents related to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has mobilised thousands of online users into doing their own digging. They range from massively popular political livestreamers such as Hasan Piker and Dean Withers to crowdsourced intelligence communities on Reddit. These netizens are combing through documents, comparing excerpts and trying to piece together what the archive does (and does not)…

Mar

10

2026

By The African Mirror

OIl ABOVE $100: How America’s war on Iran is taxing the world’s poorest nations

WORLD

WHEN the first American B-2 stealth bombers crossed into Iranian airspace on the night of 28 February 2026, the explosions they triggered were felt not only in Tehran but in the fuel queues of Nairobi, the supermarkets of Johannesburg and the freight corridors of Lagos. Ten days later, the full economic aftershock is arriving - and for hundreds of millions of people who had nothing to do with Washington's decision to go to war, the bill is arriving fast. Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, surged past $100 a barrel on Sunday - a threshold not breached since Russia's invasion…

Mar

10

2026

By JOHN CALABRESE

China’s muted response over war in Iran reflects Beijing’s delicate calculus as a concerned onlooker

WORLD

CHINA has perfected the role of concerned onlooker as the Middle East conflict spreads across the region. With no direct role in the conflict and some 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometres) away from the action, Beijing has a little more breathing room to work out the calculus on how the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran affects its interests. Yet the recent events nonetheless place China in a strategically uncomfortable position. The U.S. campaign is the most significant operation conducted by China’s main strategic, economic and military rival since the Iraq war, and it is unfolding across a region central to China’s energy…

Mar

10

2026

By MARISSA MARTINEZ

As Kristi Noem exits post, her ‘ICE Barbie’ shadow remains

WORLD

FEW, if any, of Donald Trump’s Cabinet members have featured themselves so prominently as a figurehead within their agencies as former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The South Dakota Republican centralised herself at many turns throughout her tenure. She posed with loaded guns next to immigration enforcement officers. She appeared at briefings decked out in tactical gear. She visited active operations, with constant in-house promotional footage produced along the way. This story was originally reported by Marissa Martinez of The 19th. Meet Marissa and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. Unlike most agency heads,…

Mar

09

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

A giant goes home: Chicago and the world bid farewell to Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. In a weekend of song, fire, tears, and transcendence

WORLD

HE had spent six decades telling the world that every human being is somebody. And when the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. was finally laid to rest in the rich black earth of Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery on the afternoon of Saturday, 7 March 2026, the world made plain that he - above most - had been somebody extraordinary. Over a two-day crescendo of remembrance that will be counted among the great public funerals of the American century, Chicago's South Side became a pilgrimage ground. Heads of state flew in from Africa. Three former presidents took to the pulpit. Jennifer…

Mar

09

2026

By MIRA AL HUSSEIN

How people in the Gulf are reacting to the Iran war

WORLD

IRAN immediately responded to US-Israeli strikes on February 28 by launching coordinated missile and drone attacks against US military installations in the Gulf region. Since then, its targeting has expanded to airports, seaports, hotels and oil refineries. The debris from missile interceptions has produced several casualties. The first official statements from governments in the Gulf, with the exception of Oman, refrained from condemning the US-Israeli strikes. Those strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with several senior Iranian officials and nearly 180 civilians. Many of these were schoolgirls killed in an attack on a school in southern Iran.…

Mar

09

2026

By HIND ELHINNAWY

Women Without Men: the feminist book that Iran’s regime has failed to silence since the 80s

WORLD

FOR more than three decades, Iran tried and failed to silence Women Without Men (Zanan bedun-e Mardan in Persian). Shahrnush Parsipur’s novella exposed the brutality of Iranian patriarchy with rare clarity. It did so long before global audiences recognised that violence. Published in 1989, the book was banned almost immediately, and Parsipur was imprisoned twice for writing openly about women’s sexuality and autonomy – an act of artistic courage the Islamic Republic deemed intolerable. Despite the regime’s attempts to erase it, the novella endured. It moved through underground networks and crossed borders with quiet determination. Today, Parsipur lives in exile…

Mar

07

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

A Nation Buries Its Hero: Three former presidents join thousands in Chicago to bid farewell to the Rev. Jesse Jackson

WORLD

THEY came by the thousands, from Indianapolis and Atlanta and Washington and points far beyond, lining up in the rain outside a South Side megachurch to say goodbye to the man who told them, for decades, to keep hope alive. On Friday, the United States paused to bury the Rev. Jesse Jackson - civil rights titan, two-time presidential candidate, ordained minister, and conscience of a movement that refused to die - at a homegoing service at the House of Hope Convention and Event Centre in Chicago’s historic Pullman neighbourhood. The arena, holding some 10,000 seats, was the only venue large…

Mar

07

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

War’s human toll: 330,000 displaced as Middle East conflict spreads from Iran to Afghanistan

WORLD

MORE than 330,000 people have been forcibly displaced — mostly within their own countries — as intensifying hostilities sweep across the Middle East, the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported Thursday. The figure, already vast, is almost certain to grow. Coordinated US and Israeli strikes against Iran aimed at regime change continue to cause loss of life and damage across the region, prompting Iranian missile and drone counter-strikes hitting targets in multiple countries. The arithmetic of suffering is staggering in its breadth. At least 555 Iranians have been killed since the beginning of the joint US-Israeli military campaign, which began on…