Kenya’s diamonds smuggling legend Kamlesh Pattni pulls another rabbit from the hat in Zimbabwe, sucks in President Mnangagwa
A gold smuggler implicated in a scandal that robbed Kenya of 10 per cent of its GDP in the 1990s has moved his smuggling operations to Zimbabwe and Dubai, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) can reveal. Kamlesh Pattni was involved in the so-called Goldenberg scam, a gold smuggling operation that...
Kenya and Uganda generals meet in Nairobi to review military collaboration against backdrop of conflict in DRC, Somalia
Senior officers from the Kenyan and Ugandan defence forces met in Nairobi this week to further cement “engagement and collaboration as partners seeking sustainable security solutions”. The two-day joint defence committee (JDC) meeting followed last year’s signing of a defence co-operation agreement. The meeting was attended by officers from Kenya...
How ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot can help decolonise aid, ease access to donor funding
A few years ago, I spent months helping to create materials to help local organisations navigate the overcomplicated global humanitarian system. Today, the same tools can be researched and drafted in mere minutes using ChatGPT. With a few back-and-forth exchanges, the artificial intelligence chatbot can quickly summarise funding opportunities for...
Britain transfers Tamil refugees who attempted suicide to Rwanda Military Hospital for treatment
Five Tamil asylum seekers who attempted suicide on the British-held Indian Ocean Island of Diego Garcia have been sent to Rwanda for medical treatment, it has been established. The news follows a recent backlash against the British government’s immigration deterrence policies and a scandal that involved 200 unaccompanied minors who...
Holocaust: Be it actual war or potential nuclear catastrophe, it’s certainly looking mighty ugly right now
In my youth, atomic war was, culturally speaking, all around us. It was even in outer space, as in the 1955 film This Island Earth in which another planet goes up in a version of radioactive flames, scaring the living hell out of the 11-year-old Thomas M. Engelhardt. So, yes,...
Everywhere in our lives there lurks the possibility we might be next victims of nuclear wipe out
Indulge me for a moment. This is how “The Prophecy” in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City. “Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but...