Somalia

Breaking: Puntland State deploys troops to Sool to block voter registration as tensions spike What happened Puntland State authorities have deployed security forces to parts of Somalia’s Sool region to halt a federally backed voter registration drive, residents and local officials said Monday, deepening an already volatile political standoff in the country’s northeast. Convoys moved into Boocame district and the nearby Falariyale area—territory where electoral commissions from the federal government and a newly declared…

Nuruddin Farah’s Honorary Degree Is Also a Map of Where African Letters Are Headed On a damp London morning, SOAS, University of London, conferred an honorary doctorate on the Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah — an author whose life’s work has been to rescue a country by rebuilding it on the page. The honor feels tidy and ceremonial; Farah’s novels are anything but. Over nearly five decades, from the dictatorship of Siad Barre to the age of global exile, he has written Somalia into visibility with an unblinking steadiness. You…

Burnsville woman charged as 75th defendant in Minnesota’s sweeping ‘Feeding Our Future’ case MINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged a Burnsville woman with siphoning nearly $1 million from a taxpayer-funded child nutrition program — the latest arrest in what authorities call the largest COVID-19 fraud case in the United States. Prosecutors say 44-year-old Muna Wais Fidhin misused federal money meant to serve meals to children during the pandemic, instead paying her mortgage, buying a car and sending…

Analysis: In Puntland State, a Clash Over Asphalt and Paychecks Reveals a Deeper Crisis In the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland State, a single sentence has cracked open a wider argument about what progress looks like—and what keeps a state together. “Roads are more important to us than their salaries,” Finance Minister Mohamed Farah Mahmoud said recently, defending public works spending as government employees report going months without pay. The backlash was swift and raw: civil servants, police, and ordinary…

How a proposed Ethiopia–North Western State of Somalia swap for Red Sea access was stopped by multilateral pressure When former North Western State of Somalia president Muse Bihi Abdi unveiled a deal that would have given landlocked Ethiopia a slice of Red Sea coastline in return for formal recognition of North Western State of Somalia, it briefly reconfigured the diplomatic maps of the Horn of Africa. The pact — which Bihi says offered Ethiopia roughly 20 kilometres of shoreline for a port and a military base — was never…

Kenya’s president travels to Addis Ababa as Ethiopia opens contested Grand Renaissance Dam ADDIS ABABA — Kenya’s President William Ruto arrived in Ethiopia on Sunday to attend the inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a sweeping hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile that has long been a flashpoint with downstream neighbours Egypt and Sudan. State House in Nairobi cast the visit as a milestone for continental cooperation. “This inauguration symbolizes Africa’s self-reliance and a major step in…

Somalia sets Sept. 9 restart for voter registration in push toward one-person, one-vote Somalia’s electoral clock will start ticking again next week. The country’s Independent National Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced Saturday that voter registration for long-promised one-person, one-vote elections will resume on Sept. 9 and run through Sept. 30 — a narrow window with outsized stakes for a nation attempting to exit decades of indirect, clan-based politics. What’s new Commission Chairman Abdikarin Ahmed Hassan…

EU slaps Google with €2.95 billion fine — a test of whether Europe can actually tame Big Tech BRUSSELS — In a decisive move that underscores Europe’s determination to reshape the digital economy, regulators on Friday fined Google €2.95 billion ($3.5 billion), ruling that the U.S. search giant abused its dominance in online advertising by steering business to its own services and squeezing rivals, publishers and advertisers. The European Commission said the practice — centered on Google’s AdX exchange and DFP ad server —…

England grind past Andorra as style questions linger ahead of Serbia test The cheers at Villa Park were more relieved than rapturous. England beat Andorra 2-0 on Saturday in Birmingham, a result that keeps Thomas Tuchel’s side perfect in World Cup qualifying. Yet the manner of it—a labored first half, a breakthrough via an own goal, and a second from a set of impeccable delivery and timing—left a near-40,000 crowd murmuring about whether this team is edging toward pragmatism over panache. On a night when England had 83% of…

Kenyan man indicted in U.S. child-nutrition fraud probe as investigators trace money to Nairobi real estate