GUINEA BISSAU – “Attack against democracy failed” – President Umaro Cissoco Embaló

 Residents of Bissau, the capital of Guinea Bissau were on edge all day Tuesday, but according to a calm looking President Umaro Cissoco Embaló, the “attack against democracy failed,”

Reports reaching DNT during the almost five-hour uncertainty when the whereabouts of the president and his cabinet was unknown, it appeared as though West Africa was on the verge of a fourth successful coup d’etat.

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President Umaro Cissoco Embaló’s reassuring speech indicates a failed coup attempt.

The state broadcaster reported that “invaders” were holding government officials but on Tuesday evening, a statement from the president’s Facebook account said “Calm returns to Bissau!”

Then in a statement broadcast live on local media on Tuesday night, the president said that security forces were able to stop a “failed attack against democracy” and that “many” security officials had died. No ministers were killed he said and arrests had already been made.

On Tuesday many of the capital’s streets were scarce due to fears of the unrest.

West African regional bloc Ecowas swiftly condemned what it described as an attempted coup on Tuesday afternoon. “Ecowas is following with great concern the evolution of the situation in Guinea-Bissau … where military gunfire is taking place around the government palace,” the organisation said.

“Ecowas condemns this attempted coup and holds the military responsible for the safety of President Umaro Cissoco Embaló and members of his government,” it added.

The comments mirror a statement released last week after a coup in Burkina Faso, another in a rising number of coups in the last 18 months in west Africa.

Multiple military takeovers in Mali, as well as Guinea and Burkina Faso, have seen militaries backed by popular support depose elected leaders, fuelled by mass frustration with rising jihadist insurgency in the Sahel.

Guinea-Bissau has often faced the threat of military coups since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974. The small country of just 1.5 million people has had four coups and more than a dozen attempts.

The UN said secretary general António Guterres was “deeply concerned with the news of heavy fighting in Bissau”.

He called for “an immediate end to the fighting and for full respect of the country’s democratic institutions”.

Embaló, a former army general, was declared the winner of the 2020 election, although the results were contested by former PM Domingos Simões Pereira.

Embaló then started forming a new government with support from the military while a supreme court election challenge was still pending.

In October last year, the armed forces chief said members of the military had been preparing to launch a coup while the president was on a working trip to Brazil.

Troops had been offering bribes to other soldiers “in order to subvert the established constitutional order”, armed forces head General Biague Na Ntam said.

After independence from Portuguese colonial rule, Guinea-Bissau has grappled with successive coup attempts, civil war and corruption, and is one of the world’s poorest countries. Drug trafficking is a major challenge and in the 2000s, it became known as a transit point for cocaine between Latin America and Europe as traffickers profited from corruption and weak law enforcement.

 

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Nestle proposes to pay African cocoa farmers to keep their kids in school

 Leading global food manufacturer, Nestle S.A, has expressed its readiness to pay cocoa farmers in West Africa and elsewhere to keep their children in school instead of using them as child labourers.

Business Insider Africa understands that Nestle’s resolution followed a series of backlash which chocolate makers have faced in recent times, for knowing or inadvertently encouraging child labour through the use of cocoa beans farmed/processed by children.

Various groups, including customers, investors and even governments have expressed displeasure over this trend which is most common in West Africa. As you may well know, Ivory Coast and Ghana are among the region’s leading cocoa producers. And farmers are known to use their children as labourers, thus keeping them away from school.

Nestle’s new income accelerator initiative will take care of this issue by addressing the income gap problem which forces most farmers to use their children as labourers. Addressing this issue would also help Nestle to ensure that all of its cocoa beans are purchased through ethically sourced means.

Commenting on the development, Nestle’s Chief Executive Officer, Mark Schneider, explained that the new initiative “focuses on the root causes for child labour and the living income gap farmers and their families face”.

In the meantime, the initiative has received a nod of approval from notable figures such as the Prime Minister of Ivory Coast, Patrick Achi. He described the initiative as a welcome development, stressing that “we must at all costs and by all means deal with the root cause of the ills on which we all agree, which is the income of the farming population”.

Do note that farmers can only qualify to receive payment from Nestle if it has been certified that they’ve enrolled their children in schools. Other factors will also be considered.

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Ethiopian Airlines to resume 737 MAX flights after 2019 crash

 Ethiopian Airlines is set Tuesday to operate the Boeing 737 MAX for the first time since a crash nearly three years ago killed all 157 people on board and triggered the global grounding of the aircraft.

Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi plunged six minutes after takeoff into a field southeast of the Ethiopian capital in March 2019, five months after a similar crash in Indonesia left 189 people dead.

The twin disasters and subsequent scrutiny of the 737 MAX’s faulty flight handling system — known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — amounted to the worst crisis in Boeing’s history.

State-owned Ethiopian Airlines, the jewel of the economy of Africa’s second most populous country, had long said it would be the last carrier to use the single-aisle jets again.

In a statement,the airline said the decision to resume 737 MAX flights came after “intense re-certification” by regulators in the United States, the European Union, China and Ethiopia.

A first passenger flight will take place on Tuesday, the airline has said, without giving details.

The airline, which had four of the jets in its fleet at the time of the crash, provided a list of 35 other carriers that are also now flying them.

“Our pilots, engineers, aircraft technicians, and cabin crew are fully prepared to take the B737 MAX back to the skies and we look forward to welcoming you on board,” its statement said.

The decision to wait as long as it did before flying the 737 MAX again was “really commendable”, said Yeshiwas Fentahun, who was president of Ethiopia’s independent pilots’ association in 2019 but is no longer with the company.

The loss of the flight crew — including its youngest captain, Yared Getachew — was traumatic for all employees, he said.

“There were pilots who were close to the people who lost their lives in the accident, and it’s really hard to say if everyone has moved past that experience,” he said.

“But I believe it’s a reasonable time for most of us to move past that experience.”

The victims of the Flight 302 crash, the worst in Ethiopia’s history, hailed from more than 30 countries.

Boeing has reached an agreement with the victims’ families and accepted responsibility for the crash, according to legal documents filed in November in Chicago, where the company is headquartered.

The proposed agreement did not mention specific sums, as jurors will be responsible for assessing amounts.

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Russia, US exchange accusations over Ukraine at UN

 Russia accused the West on Monday of “whipping up tensions” over Ukraine and said the U.S. had brought “pure Nazis” to power in Kyiv as the U.N. Security Council held a stormy and bellicose debate on Moscow’s troop buildup near its southern neighbor.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield shot back that Russia’s growing military force of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders was “the largest mobilization” in Europe in decades, adding that there has been a spike in cyber attacks and Russian disinformation.

“And they are attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack,” she said.

The harsh exchanges in the Security Council came as Moscow lost an attempt to block the meeting and reflected the gulf between the two nuclear powers. It was the first open session where all protagonists in the Ukraine crisis spoke publicly, even though the U.N.’s most powerful body took no action.

Hours later, the Russian government sent a written response to a U.S. proposal aimed at deescalating the crisis, according to three Biden administration officials. The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity. A State Department official declined to offer details of the response, saying it “would be unproductive to negotiate in public” and that they would leave it up to Russia to discuss the counter proposal.

Although more high-level diplomacy is expected this week, talks between the U.S. and Russia have so far failed to ease tensions in the crisis, with the West saying Moscow is preparing for an invasion. Russia denies it is planning to attack. It demands pledges that Ukraine will never join NATO, a halt to the deployment of NATO weapons near Russian borders and a rollback of the alliance’s forces from Eastern Europe. NATO and the U.S. call those nonstarters.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the U.S. of interfering in his country’s internal affairs and seeking “a classic example of megaphone diplomacy.”

Thomas-Greenfield countered that the U.S. has held over 100 private meetings in the past few weeks with Russian officials and European and Ukrainian colleagues and “it’s now time” for a discussion in public.

To Russia’s assertion that the U.S. called the meeting to make all council members feel uncomfortable, she retorted, “Imagine how uncomfortable you would be if you had 100,000 troops sitting on your border.”

After the council gave a green light for the meeting, Nebenzia accused the Biden administration of “whipping up tensions and rhetoric and provoking escalation.”

“You are almost pulling for this,” he said in his speech to the council, looking at Thomas-Greenfield. “You want it to happen. You’re waiting for it to happen, as if you want to make your words become a reality.”

He blamed the U.S. for the 2014 ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president in Kyiv, saying it brought to power “nationalists, radicals, Russophobes and pure Nazis” and created the antagonism that exists between Ukraine and Russia.

Nebenzia pointedly left the council chamber as the Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya started to speak. “How long Russia will pressure, will pursue a clear attempt to push Ukraine and its partners into a Kafka trap?” Kyslytsva asked.

The vote on holding an open meeting passed 10-2, with Russia and China opposed, and India, Gabon and Kenya abstaining. Nine “yes” votes were needed for the meeting to go ahead.

The U.S. and its allies had pressed to hold the meeting Monday, the last day of Norway’s rotating presidency of the council, before Russia takes over Tuesday for the month of February.

Any statement or resolution by the Security Council is extremely unlikely, given Russia’s veto power and its ties with others on the council, including China.

After all 15 council members spoke, the U.S. and Russia sparred again, with Thomas-Greenfield saying she was “disappointed” in Nebenzia’s comments, stressing that Russian threats of aggression are “provocative.”

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement that the meeting was “a critical step in rallying the world to speak out in one voice” to reject the use of force and seek military de-escalation.

At the start of a White House meeting with the ruling emir of Qatar, Biden said the U.S. continues to engage in “nonstop diplomacy,” but “we are ready no matter what happens.”

The State Department on Monday ordered the departure of families of American diplomats in Belarus, where Russia is deploying troops, tanks and other materiel in what Moscow says is a military exercise.

Western officials fear Russia’s troop buildup could use Belarus as a jumping-off point to invade neighboring Ukraine, especially its capital, Kyiv, from the north. Tens of thousands of other Russian troops already are staged elsewhere along Ukraine’s borders.

Belarus officials already have pushed most U.S. Embassy staff out of the country, leaving fewer family members to be affected by Monday’s order. The U.S. has also drawn down its diplomatic presence in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken are expected to speak by phone Tuesday, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. A senior State Department official confirmed the Russian account.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit Ukraine on Tuesday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and will also speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to urge him to “step back,” Johnson’s office said. Johnson says he is considering sending hundreds of British troops to NATO countries in the Baltic region as a show of strength.

Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress said Monday they were still divided over some of the timing in draft sanctions legislation against Russia. A Republican push to impose sanctions on a Russian natural gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, even before any new Russian push into Ukraine was a main sticking point, lawmakers said. The Biden administration argues for waiting after any invasion, saying sanctioning Nord Stream now could alienate an ally, Germany, and remove the deterrence power of that sanctions threat.

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Oxford University ‘lost’ college discovered

 A “lost” Oxford University college has been unearthed during the construction project for new student flats.

The former St Mary’s College was founded in 1435 but had already fallen into disrepair 100 years later.

A team from Oxford Archaeology discovered a massive limestone wall foundation, butchered animal bones and decorated floor tiles.

Construction firm Beard is developing 30 student flats at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe.

The ill-fated St Mary’s College was to be a base for Augustinian canons studying in Oxford.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built, but construction was very slow.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey tried to speed things up but was later accused of treason by King Henry VIII and died.

The college further faded into obscurity after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

A team from Oxford Archaeology are excavating a series of pits

Archaeologists have found a wall believed to have supported one of the college’s stone buildings.

They are also excavating a series of pits where disposed animal bones and charcoal suggest the kitchens were nearby.

Other items include a 17th Century stone flagon – drinks container, a bone comb and a medieval long cross silver penny.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built at the site

The site has been occupied since the late 11th Century and was once the location of a high status Norman house.

Ben Ford, senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology, called the remains a “unique and fascinating part of Oxford”.

“We are hoping to shed light not only on the layout of the lost college of St Mary’s, but also discover evidence that tells us about the lives of some of medieval Oxford’s most powerful Norman families who probably lived at the site,” he said.

He added: “If we are really lucky, we may uncover signs of even older everyday life, from Oxford’s earliest years when it was first built as a heavily-defended town on the Thames, guarding the border between Saxon and the Viking held lands.”

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Millions of children out of school in Mozambique

 About 2.4 million of the 12 million school-age children in Mozambique are not in education, the country’s President Felipe Nyusi says.

Girls and children with special needs and those living with disabilities make up the highest numbers of children not in school, he says, adding that his government is hiring more teachers to improve the student-teacher ratio in an effort to make quality education available for all.

Mozambique has had numerous attacks by militants and natural calamities like cyclones that have damaged property. Some 778 schools have been damaged by Tropical Storm Ana in Zambézia, Tete, Manica, Sofala and Nampula provinces.

On Tuesday the president opened a new secondary school in the town of Boane that was named after him and financed by a private company, the Mozal aluminium smelter.

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Maida Vale deaths: Stabbed woman’s killing truly shocking

 The death of a woman who was stabbed in the street by her abusive ex-husband was “truly shocking and distressing”, an inquest has heard.

Yasmin Chkaifi, 43, was attacked by Leon McCaskie near both of their homes in Maida Vale, west London, on the morning of 24 January.

Family members including her two sons listened in to the short remote hearing at Westminster Coroner’s Court.

Mr McCaskie was run over by a passing car and also died at the scene.

Ms Chkaifi’s cause of death was multiple stab wounds.

The coroner, Prof Fiona Wilcox, gave her sympathy to Ms Chkaifi’s family and said “this is a truly shocking and distressing death and I cannot imagine what you must be going through at this time”.

Stalking prevention order

Ms Wilcox also expressed her sympathy to Mr McCaskie’s mother, who was listening to a separate remote hearing dealing with his death.

Det Ch Insp Neil Rawlinson told the hearing: “Leon McCaskie and Yasmin Chkaifi had been in a relationship that ended several years ago. There were allegations of domestic abuse, and a stalking prevention order had been put in place against Leon.

“Leon had been arrested and charged for breaching this order, but failed to appear for his first hearing at court.

“Police action between January 4 and 24 is currently subject to an independent investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.”

The inquests will be reviewed on 25 July.

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