WORLD - The African Mirror

Feb

25

2026

Andrew’s arrest: will anything like this now happen in the US? Why hasn’t it so far?

WORLD

THE stunning arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor by UK police on suspicion of misconduct in public office must have chilled many powerful American men to the bone. They may now wonder: could something like this now happen in the US? The former prince’s arrest is related to his association with dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and allegations that he shared confidential material. Andrew has consistently denied wrongdoing and has been released under investigation. To see UK police making arrests over allegations relating to Epstein contrasts strongly with the US where, so far, little has happened to further investigate those linked to…

Feb

23

2026

By The African Mirror

Ukraine’s women bear brunt of war’s energy crisis as funding cuts threaten aid networks

WORLD

FOURyears after Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine's women are losing jobs, safety and access to vital services as deliberate attacks have wiped out nearly two-thirds of the country's energy generation capacity, United Nations officials warned Friday. Speaking in Geneva, UN Women's Chief of Humanitarian Action Sofia Calltorp said widespread power blackouts are doing far more than keeping the lights off. Extended outages are stripping women of economic security, restricting their movement, and leaving them more exposed to harassment and violence. "No electricity means no school for my children and no electricity means no job for me," Calltorp recounted one Kyiv resident,…

Feb

23

2026

By BERT JOHNSON

How Jesse Jackson set the stage for Bernie Sanders and today’s progressives

WORLD

JESSE Jackson’s two campaigns for president, in 1984 and 1988, were unsuccessful but historic. The civil rights activist and organiser, who died on February 17, 2026, helped pave the way for Barack Obama’s election a generation later as the nation’s first – and so far only – African American president. Jackson’s campaigns energised a multiracial coalition that not only provided support for other late-20th-century Democratic politicians, including President Bill Clinton, but helped create an organising template – a so-called Rainbow Coalition combining Black, Latino, working-class white and young voters – that continues to resonate in progressive politics today. Vermont, where…

Feb

23

2026

By DAVID CINGRANELLI and SKIP MARK

Atrocities take place in democratic nations as well as autocratic ones – our database has logged them all

WORLD

THOUSANDS of people were killed by Iranian security forces during the days of protests in January 2026. Meanwhile, in the same month, the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis shone a light on the use of fatal force by American law enforcement — a phenomenon that in 2025 saw the deaths of more than 1,300 people in the U.S., according to data tracking such incidents. But should one of those two sets of killings be classified as a government-involved “atrocity” and the other not? The answer may not be as simple as you think, and it revolves around how you…

Feb

21

2026

By ERRIN HAINES

‘He gave me my wings’: Jesse Jackson opened doors for Black women in politics

WORLD

LEAH Daughtry was 6 years old when she first met the Rev. Jesse Jackson at a boycott of a local grocery store that refused to hire Black workers. Her father was a prominent civil rights activist and church leader, long active in politics, and Jackson became a fixture in the Daughtry family’s home and church in Brooklyn. Later, when Daughtry was a student at Dartmouth College, Jackson introduced her to presidential politics when he recruited her to mobilise young voters in New Hampshire. This story was originally reported by Errin Haines of The 19th. Meet Errin and read more of…

Feb

21

2026

By MATTHEW BUNN

Last nuclear weapons limits expired – pushing world toward new arms race

WORLD

FOR the first time in more than half a century, there are no binding restraints on the buildup of the largest nuclear forces on Earth. The New START treaty expired on Feb. 5, 2026, ending the last agreed limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces. New START limited the number of strategic nuclear weapons the United States and Russia could deploy to 1,550 each. It also limited the missiles and bombers on which those warheads were loaded, required on-site inspections and data exchanges, barred interference with satellite monitoring, and established a joint commission to discuss disputes. It did not limit…

Feb

20

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Andrew former Prince, arrested; Clintons summoned as Epstein scandal claims its biggest scalp yet

WORLD

ANDREW Mountbatten-Windsor, the disgraced former Duke of York, was arrested by Metropolitan Police officers at his Windsor home Thursday morning in what represents the most dramatic escalation of the Epstein scandal since Jeffrey Epstein's own death in 2019 - and the starkest demonstration yet that the investigation's gravitational pull is far from spent. The arrest, confirmed by Scotland Yard in a terse statement shortly before 9 a.m. GMT, came on suspicion that Andrew used his official royal office and the prestige of the British Crown to facilitate and enhance Epstein's business interests - a charge that, if proven, would constitute…

Feb

20

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

A verdict that speaks to history: South Korea’s judiciary draws a line in the sand

WORLD

WHEN Judge Jee Kui-youn lifted his gaze to a packed Seoul courtroom on Thursday morning and pronounced a life sentence upon Yoon Suk Yeol, the 65-year-old stood ashen-faced in a dark navy suit. The former president — once the most powerful man in Asia's fourth-largest economy — received his reckoning not from the ballot box, which he had tried to circumvent, but from the judiciary he had underestimated. The verdict is more than a sentencing. It is a constitutional statement. In a country long tested by authoritarian temptation — military coups, state oppression, mass protest — Thursday's ruling completes a…

Feb

20

2026

By NIALL ODDY

How can Europe meet the challenge posed by the retreat of the US?

WORLD

AT the Munich security conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke more warmly about the transatlantic relationship than US Vice President J.D. Vance at the same venue last year. However, faced with the presidency of the erratic Donald Trump, the need for Europe to do more to protect its security remains urgent. In a later speech in Munich, Kaja Kallas, vice-president of the European Commission and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, spoke of the “need to reclaim European agency”. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he wants closer relations with Europe, a decade…

Feb

18

2026

By GIBBS KNOTTS and CHRISTOPHER A. COOPER

How Jesse Jackson was shaped by Southern segregation − and went on to reshape American political life

WORLD

HOLDING hands with other prominent Black leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 9, 2025, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.” Like several survivors of that violent day in 1965, when police brutally attacked civil rights protesters, Jackson crossed the bridge in a wheelchair. Jesse Louis Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, a town firmly entrenched in the racially segregated Deep South. This time and place aren’t footnotes to Jackson’s life, but rather key facts that shaped his civil rights activism and historic runs for the…