Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been faced with an fresh criminal charge during a court hearing on Monday.
According to her lawyer Min Min Soe, Suu Kyi appeared for Monday’s court hearing via a video link and was slapped with an additional charge related to a natural disaster law
Min Min Soe said Suu Kyi is being been charged in six cases altogether, five charges in the capital Naypyidaw and one in Yangon. She added that the next hearing is set for April 26.
At her latest court hearing, Suu Kyi who has seen in public since being detained on February 1, when Myanmar’s military deposed her government has again asked to be allowed to meet her lawyers in person.
The 75-year-old Nobel laureate has only been allowed to talk with her lawyers via video link in the presence of security officials.
Security forces have killed 706 protesters, including 46 children, since the coup, according to a tally by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group.
That tally includes 82 people killed in the town of Bago, about 70 kilometres northeast of Yangon, on Friday, which the AAPP called a “killing field”.
A senior Apple Inc executive has agreed to testify before the U.S. Senate on competition issues related to mobile app stores, days after panel leaders criticized the company for refusing to appear.
The company said in a letter sent to senators, seen by Reuters, that Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer will be available to testify at an April 21 hearing held by part of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
App makers have long complained that mandatory revenue sharing payments and strict inclusion rules set by Apple’s App Store for iPhones and iPads, along with Google’s Play store for Android devices, amount to anticompetitive behavior.
On Friday, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, and Mike Lee, a Republican, sent a letter to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook calling it “unacceptable” the company was refusing to send a witness. The pair are leaders of the Senate Judiciary panel’s subcommittee on competition policy and antitrust.
HSBC and Huawei Technologies’ Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou have reached an agreement in a dispute about the publication of documents relating to U.S. fraud allegations against her, their lawyers told a Hong Kong court.
The judge, Linda Chan, made court orders along the lines of the agreement, she said on Monday. The orders were, however, not immediately available.
The legal dispute reached the Hong Kong court last month after a British judge in February blocked the release of internal HSBC documents relating to the fraud allegations against Meng.
Meng, who has been under house arrest in Canada since being detained at Vancouver airport in 2018, is facing charges of bank fraud in the United States for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei dealings in Iran, causing the bank to violate U.S. sanctions.
Meng, who says she is innocent, was seeking the publication of documents relating to her ongoing efforts to battle extradition from Canada to the U.S.
The United Nations says Over 116,000 Somalis have been displaced by extreme water shortages since October 2020.
The statement issued by Mogadishu and the UN Somalia office, expressed deep concern about the worsening drought conditions saying Most parts of the country are facing critical water shortages.
In the statement, Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Minister Khadija Mohamed Diriye appealed to donors to “give generously and respond rapidly to the situation.
She said urgent funding is required to alleviate suffering and get assistance amidst food insecurity, population displacement, malnutrition, and disease.
Somalia has been facing especially concerning conditions as forecasts indicate a second consecutive season of below-average rainfall from April to June.
In Bakol and the Gedo regions, People, have been struggling against water shortages, with local media reporting that several people, including children, are dying from dehydration. According to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Up to 2.7 million people across the country are in need of humanitarian assistance,
Ethiopian Airlines has marked 75 years since it began commercial flights, but tough times still lie ahead for aviation as the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect international travel.
A special event was held to mark the anniversary on a flight to Cairo.
The Airlines’ CEO Tewolde GebreMariam warned of serious challenges posed by COVID-19’ but said they are the commercial airline that hasn’t sought government bailout and didn’t lay off a single employee.
To mitigate the damage caused by the pandemic, Ethiopian quickly jumped on the opportunity to move tons of medical supplies meant for coronavirus response in Africa.
In addition to its 12 dedicated cargo aircraft, the company reconfigured 25 passenger planes to turn them into freighters to respond to increased cargo demand.
On April 8 1946, the company operated its first-ever commercial flight flying from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital to Cairo, Egypt.
The carrier’s initial fleet consisted of five C-47s acquired from the US government but has since grown to 127 aircraft. Ethiopian is Africa’s biggest airline by revenue and profit, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
African Airlines have been particularly hit by covid-19 and the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAO) says African airlines were at risk of losing $6 billion in revenue and 3 million jobs in 2020 compared to 2019.
Authorities in Eritrea have released 36 Christians who had been in detention for their faith, on bail.
The prisoners are all from Christian Evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, 14 of whom have been in detention for the past four years in the Dahilik island and the remaining Twenty-two others arrested at end of last month.
In 2002 Eritrea introduced a new law that forbids all churches except for the Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran denominations.
Since September 2020, the government has released over 48 prisoners who have spent years in detention, however, many christians are still incarcerated and others, routinely arrested for their faith.
The Eritrean government has accused and continues to accuse Pentecostal and Evangelical Christians of being instruments of foreign governments.
The country of Eritrea has been ruled by Isaias Afwerki since its independence from Ethiopia in 1993, with no elections, no parliament and a constitution that has never been enforced.
South-west Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, has disclosed that his administration would by the middle of May 2021, commission four brand new Fire and Emergency Stations in Ifo, Ado-Odo-Ota, and Isheri parts of the state.
Prince Dapo Abiodun who made this known while on an inspection tour of the Isheri Fire and Emergency Station, said that the fire station which is almost 95 to 96 per cent completed is in fufilment of his promise during the electioneering to ensure that the state does not have to rely on Lagos State to fight fire outbreak on the Ogun part of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.
“The fire station is about 95 to 96 per cent completed; we have acquired the fire trucks and water trucks that will be here. We’ve built four of these stations; one in Ado-Odo Ota Local Government in addition to what they have and another one in Ifo Constituency 1.
“In the entire Ifo, we found out that there was no fire station, so, we built two fire stations in both Ifo I and Ifo II constituencies. Ifo now has two fire stations, and they will be getting two brand new fire trucks.
“We should be coming here in the next three to four weeks to formally commission this fire station, amongst other fire stations that we will be commissioning towards the middle of May, 2021,” he said.
Abiodun who also added that the fire stations when commissioned would be equipped with new fire trucks and water trucks, said part of his administration’s Emergency Response System is the combination of fire trucks and ambulances on the same spot.
While recalling that his administration upon assumption of office took stock of fire stations in the state, he revealed that that they were not habitable and not fit for any human use, as a result of years of neglect.
He however assured that his administration would continue to put the people first.
“When we resumed office, we decided to take stock of our fire stations, but, what we saw was embarrassing, I am not sure that the fire stations have been attended to, probably in the past 12 to 14 years. They were not habitable, they were not fit for any human use, they were not premises that would even motivate anyone to attend to any fire, so, we have embarked on the massive rehabilitation of existing ones. We have rehabilitated the stations, we have acquired new fire trucks.
“All these we will be unveiling, they are part of our emergency response system in Ogun State which is the combination of fire trucks and ambulances.
Former banker Guillermo Lasso won Ecuador’s presidential election on Sunday after his socialist opponent Andres Arauz conceded.
According to the National Electoral Council said Lasso had 52.51 percent of the vote compared to Arauz’s 47.49 percent with 93.14 percent of votes counted.
Earlier, television stations Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas published the results of the Cedatos exit poll that gave Lasso almost a 6.5 percentage point lead over Arauz.
Lasso, aged 65, is a third-time presidential candidate having finished second to former president Correa in 2013 and Moreno in 2017.
Voting is obligatory, and opinion polls had the rivals neck and neck heading into the election for Ecuador’s 13.1 million registered voters to pick a successor to the deeply unpopular Lenin Moreno.
Arauz, is virtually unknown but topped February’s first round of voting on the back of support from his mentor, Correa, who led the country from 2007-2017.
Arauz, the candidate from the Union of Hope coalition, topped the first round with almost 33 percent of the vote, 13 percentage points ahead of Lasso, from the Creating Opportunities movement.
Lasso will take over from beleaguered Moreno on May 24 and will immediately face an economic crisis exasperated by a 7.8 percent contraction in GDP in 2020.
At the same time, the country has been hard-hit by the pandemic, with hospitals overwhelmed by more than 340,000 coronavirus infections and more than 17,000 deaths.
Tense presidential elections have held in Benin as people cast their votes early on Sunday in a vote that has been marred by violence during campaigning.
Incumbent President Patrice Talon is facing only two rivals which are Alassane Soumanou and Corentin Kohoué, while opponents are either exiled abroad or barred from running due to the new electoral code and institutional reform.
Benin will also elect a vice-president for the first time and Talon has chosen a woman for the post; Mariam Talata, a 57-year-old philosophy professor who is charismatic and a feminist.
In the South of the country, campaigning was lackluster but in the North, serious violence broke out after residents blocked roads and the army cleared the way using live ammunition.
According to the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (Cena) the roadblocks caused a delay in the deployment of electoral materials in the North.
However, The president has promised a sure first-round victory and is staking his economic record in his bid for a second term.
Nearly five million voters are expected in over 15,000 polling stations across the country including in southern Cotonou, Porto Novo, Bom and Calavis
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