African leaders attempt mediation in Ukraine war but Russia ‘greets’ them with rocket strikes on Kyiv
African are seeking agreement on a series of “confidence building measures”, but Kyiv has said its own peace initiative must be the basis of any settlement and has launched a counteroffensive to push back Russian occupying forces.
Manchester City releases wingback Benjamin Mendy as he faces retrial for sexual assault
Jurors could not reach verdicts on one count of rape and one of attempted rape against two other alleged victims after 67 hours and 17 minutes of deliberations.
How Florida-based tech-savvy young woman Marissa Kearny is matching Black-owned businesses with big stores in US
In 2018, Census Bureau data found about 3,115,000 Black-owned businesses had no employees, compared to 134,567 with employees. Yet, Black companies only make up about three per cent of all US businesses.
US foreign secretary Antony Blinken flies to Beijing in effort to sensibly manage tenuous US-PRC relations
In its readout of the Blinken-Qin phone call, China’s foreign ministry said Qin urged the United States to respect “China’s core concerns” such as the issue of Taiwan’s self-rule, “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and stop harming China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.”
Conservationists in Kenya shift focus on pastoralist women in to curb human-wildlife conflicts
The 60 women from the Maasai community graduated this week after their first year of vocational training. They will now learn how to establish a business over 12 months and complete the programme with a year of mentorship.
Killer sanctions: How US during Trump regime shrank Iran’s accessible foreign reserves from $122.5b to $4b
The problem created by sanctions, according to the company, is less an unwillingness to do business with Iran over legal fears than an inability of Iranian officials to access their own foreign currency reserves to make payments. The sanctions, while not eliminating Iran’s foreign reserves, have frozen Iran’s access to them, sending the country’s accessible reserves from $122.5 billion down to a mere $4 billion between 2018 and 2020, according to International Monetary Fund figures.
Punitive sanctions slapped on Tehran by US are killing Iranian children in numbers as banks, drug makers keep off the Gulf nation
While the US has given assurances that humanitarian trade with Iran will be exempted from sanctions, the lawsuit, which is currently pending appeal after being dismissed, alleges that the large-scale sanctioning of Iran’s banking sector has created a situation in which foreign companies are either unwilling or unable to do any trade with Iran at all.
