WORLD - The African Mirror

Aug

27

2025

Israel’s killing of journalists follows a pattern of silencing Palestinian media that stretches back to 1967

WORLD

FIVE journalists were among the 22 people killed on Aug. 25, 2025, in Israeli strikes on the Nasser Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Following global condemnation, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying Israel “values the work of journalists.” But the numbers tell a different story. Those deaths bring the total number of journalists killed in Gaza in almost two years of war to 192. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which collates that data, accuses Israel of “engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” that the U.S.-based nonprofit has…

Aug

27

2025

By ANNIE SLEMROD

Hunger monitor calls for “immediate response” as famine confirmed in Gaza

WORLD

FAMINE has been confirmed in parts of Gaza for the first time since the beginning of Israel’s 22-month war on the Palestinian territory, with the world’s foremost hunger authority warning that “avoidable deaths will increase exponentially” if “a ceasefire is not implemented to allow humanitarian aid to reach everyone in the Gaza Strip, and if essential food supplies, and basic health, nutrition, and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) services are not restored immediately”. This is the first time the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Classification System (IPC)’s Famine Review Committee has determined that the strict requirements for famine have been met in…

Aug

27

2025

By AMANDA BECKER and BARBARA RODRIGUEZ

Cities led by Black women are the first targets of Trump’s political power grab

WORLD

REPUBLICAN President Donald Trump’s continued power grab in the nation’s capital, and his threat to expand his militarised takeover to other Democratic-led cities, is setting up a high-stakes showdown over the country’s democracy that pits him prominently against a familiar political foe: Black women. This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker and Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th. Meet Amanda and Barbara and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. On August 11, Trump declared that crime in the District of Columbia was “out of control,” despite violent crime being at a 30-year low, and directed Mayor…

Aug

26

2025

By RACHAEL JOLLEY

Did Trump really resolve six conflicts in a matter of months? We spoke to the experts to find out

WORLD

THE US President, Donald Trump, claims to have “solved six wars in six months”. To work out if there was any substance to his claims, The Conversation international affairs editors Sam Phelps and Rachael Jolley interviewed six academic experts on those regions to find out what Trump actually did, and whether it made a difference. India-Pakistan armed conflict in May 2025 Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor in government at the University of Essex, said that Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have both claimed that they were able to broker some kind of peace deal between India and Pakistan,…

Aug

26

2025

By ALETA MORIARTY

Israel’s attacks on Gaza are putting people with disabilities at extreme risk

WORLD

RECENT images of an emaciated Gazan child, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, provoked global outrage. Some sought to minimise this harm, attributing it instead to pre-existing conditions or disability. But framing starvation deaths in Gaza in terms of underlying disabilities or comorbidities is misleading. It is essential to recognise that these conditions do not justify suffering or death. Rather, the crisis in Gaza has intensified existing vulnerabilities for people with disabilities, who face extreme barriers to evacuation, aid and medical treatment. So, what type of practical humanitarian response is needed right now for people with disabilities in Gaza? For people with…

Aug

26

2025

By ABBAS YAZDINEJAD and JUDE KONG

Battling deepfakes: How AI threatens democracy and what we can do about it

WORLD

IMAGINE receiving a robocall, but instead of a real person, it’s the voice of a political leader telling you not to vote. You share it with your friends, your family — only to find out it was a hyper-realistic AI voice clone. This is not a hypothetical. In January 2024, a fake Joe Biden robocall reached New Hampshire Democrats, urging them to “stay home” ahead of the state primary. The voice may have been synthetic, but the panic was real — and it’s a preview of the threats facing democracies around the world as elections become the most valuable targets…

Aug

25

2025

By ASHER KAUFMAN

Netanyahu remains unmoved by Israel’s lurch toward pariah status − but at home and abroad, Israelis are suffering the consequences

WORLD

ISRAEL’S conduct in Gaza increasingly risks turning the state into a pariah. Whereas world leaders initially rallied around Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas militants, the resulting destruction inside the Palestinian enclave has seen the country ever more isolated on the international stage. In recent weeks, even long-standing allies such as Germany, the U.K. and Australia have distanced themselves from the Israeli government, notably by pushing for recognition of Palestinian statehood. As an Israeli scholar of the Middle East working in the U.S., I have seen how these international currents are affecting Israel’s standing in the world.…

Aug

25

2025

By PETER RUTLAND

The ‘security guarantee’ paradox: Too weak and it won’t protect Ukraine; too robust and Russia won’t accept it

WORLD

BACK-TO-BACK summits in Alaska and Washington with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, respectively, have done little to clarify how U.S. President Donald Trump intends to engineer an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Beyond vague exhortations of “land for peace,” it was unclear what exactly Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to in Anchorage on Aug. 15, 2025. Whatever it was, Trump’s follow-up meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders days later in the White House came up with a completely different agenda: peace in return for security guarantees from the Western powers. Putin, confident that Russia…

Aug

25

2025

By TATISHE NTETA; ADAM EICHEN; ALEXANDER THEODORIDIS; JESSE RHODES, and RAYMOND LA RAJA

Trump’s Epstein problem is real: New poll shows many in his base disapprove of his handling of the files, and some supporters are having second thoughts about electing him

WORLD

HAS President Donald Trump survived the latest and most serious firestorm of controversy over the Epstein scandal? Or has the Trump administration’s handling of the release of information concerning the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child sex trafficker and Trump’s former friend, hurt the president? A number of journalists, pointing to recent public opinion polls, have claimed that the scandal has hurt Trump. Others have argued that the public has largely moved on and the Epstein controversy no longer presents a political liability for Trump. But both of these conclusions are based on limited polling about the Epstein controversy…

Aug

23

2025

By The African Mirror

UN confirms famine in Gaza as half a million face catastrophic hunger

WORLD

THE United Nations officially confirmed Friday that famine has taken hold in the Gaza Governorate, marking the first declared famine in the Middle East and affecting more than half a million Palestinians facing catastrophic hunger conditions. The declaration came from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a 21-agency partnership that serves as the global authority on food security assessments. An additional one million people in the Gaza Strip are experiencing emergency-level food insecurity, according to the report. "This is irrefutable testimony… It is a famine, the Gaza famine," UN relief chief Tom Fletcher told reporters in Geneva as the…