Daily News Channel
The Mojave boneyard in the California desert is where old airplanes go to die — a wasteland of decrepit planes, titanic heaps of titanium and aluminum waiting to be scrapped for metal in India or China. But for Dave Hall and Donovan Fell, the boneyard is only the beginning
Incident details : "Armed pirates chased, boarded and hijacked a fishing trawler underway" SE of Mogadishu, Somalia … "Several persons armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machetes attempting to climb onboard with use of rope" Lagos anchorage, Nigeria
Three former guerrilla leaders — who helped command "one of the most brutal rebel movements in modern days" — will be sentenced Wednesday in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for their crimes against humanity. The U.N
South Africa’s ruling party president Jacob Zuma declared his innocence Tuesday after a court formally dropped corruption charges against him. “My conscience is clear I have not committed any crime against the state or the people of South Africa,” Zuma said
The same problems that brought the global banking system to its knees are shackling Africa to a future of corruption and hunger, Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai told CNN. “In any society, if there is no regulation, if there is no control, you will always get greedy and selfish people who are prepared to take the economy very far for their own selfish ends,” she said. The 69-year-old Kenyan was speaking on the phone ahead of the launch of her book, “The Challenge for Africa,” in the U.S.
A British-owned cargo ship on Monday became the latest vessel to be seized by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The 32,000-tonne Malaspina Castle was taken early on Monday and was believed to be heading towards Somalia’s pirate-infested coast, the European Union’s Horn of Africa maritime security center said. “Few details are known at this stage, but the mixed-nationality crew is believed to be safe,” a statement on the London-based organization’s Web site said
Just when shipping companies thought it was safe to go back in the water — off the Horn of Africa in particular — Somali pirates last week nabbed two large chemical tankers within 24 hours, despite the presence of a bevy of Western and other navies prowling in search of the buccaneers. The Greek-owned MV Nipayia was snagged last Wednesday, followed within a day by the capture of the Norwegian-owned MV Bow-Asir. The attacks, which occurred at 380 and 490 nautical miles offshore, showed a willingness by the pirates to operate at great distances from their lairs along the Somali coastline
Desperation, sophisticated smuggling operations and the emergence of a small Italian island as a migrant destination provide the sad backdrop to Monday’s tragedy on the Mediterranean Sea — the capsizing of boats carrying African migrants from Libya to Italy. Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said Tuesday that Libya for years has been a destination for migrants from the rest of Africa.
China on Thursday accused the United States of distorting facts in a Defense Department report on Beijing’s military power. The report — called the “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” — said the country is developing longer-range ballistic and anti-ship missiles that are “shifting the balance of power in the region.” Such military expansions could help Beijing secure resources or settle territorial disputes, said the report, released by the Pentagon on Wednesday. “This is a gross distortion of the facts and China resolutely opposes it,” ministry spokesman Qin Gang told journalists in Beijing.
Nobody ought to have been surprised that South Africa chose to heed China’s concerns and deny a visa to the Dalai Lama — not because of the South African government’s poor record of responding to human-rights crises in its own neighborhood, but because of China’s growing diplomatic influence and assertiveness thanks to its status as the great hope of an ailing world economy.