Axadle - Breaking news and analysis from Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and across Africa.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has brushed aside mounting resistance from a bloc of retired military generals and former senior civil servants to Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3, declaring “whoever wins, wins” as the fight over the proposed changes intensifies. Mnangagwa is pressing ahead with amendments that would keep him in power beyond the constitutionally stipulated two terms, setting up a sharp confrontation with the group, which has come out strongly against the bill. Represented by retired Air Marshal Henry…

As shells and diplomacy collided, Israel and Hezbollah traded fire on the ground while Lebanese and Israeli envoys sat down in Washington, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the militant group as the sole obstacle to a peace agreement. The latest violence followed US President Donald Trump's announcement on Monday that he had brokered a deal. The Lebanese embassy in Washington said the arrangement would initially apply only to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah attacks on Israeli territory, before later…

By Afyare Abdi ElmiWednesday June 3, 2026 People protest against the extension of the extension of the mandate of the current federal government, at the Eng. Yariisow Stadium along Dr. Kadare Road in Mogadishu, Somalia May 10, 2026 With its election calendar broken and no political transition agreed, Somalia has slipped into one of the gravest and most perilous phases in its modern history. On May 15, the day President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s four-year term was originally set to end, United States- and United Kingdom-backed…

Russia unleashed one of its fiercest barrages in recent weeks on Ukraine, hammering cities with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in an assault authorities said killed 22 people and injured more than 100. The strikes, which hit Kyiv and ⁠Dnipro among other cities, came after Russia warned it would carry out "systematic" attacks on the capital following a drone strike last month on a dormitory in the Russian-held Ukrainian region of Luhansk. Kyiv has denied striking the dormitory. The bombardment marked the third…

Wednesday June 3, 2026 President William Ruto has ended his three-day tour of Northern Kenya with a renewed promise to direct more development funds to a region he says has been left behind for too long. He argued that Kenya can only unlock the area’s huge untapped potential if the North is fully woven into the national development blueprint. “Northern Kenya is not peripheral; it is central to the development of Kenya,” he said on Tuesday at Maalimin in Lagdera Constituency, Garissa County. He added: “I am on a mission to…

A rare revolt from Republican senators has forced the Trump administration to scrap President Donald Trump's proposed $1.8 billion "weaponisation" fund, a dramatic reversal laid out by US Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche before lawmakers. "We are not moving forward with the fund," Mr Blanche said. "Period." Even so, Mr Blanche told politicians that one contentious piece of a separate agreement with President Donald Trump will stay intact: a provision blocking future audits of his or his family's past tax records. The…

Party donations meant for the Scottish National Party were instead used to buy a motorhome and even a robotic lawnmower, the High Court in Edinburgh has been told. Judges heard that former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell embezzled £400,310.65 from the party’s main bank account, which prosecutors said was under his control. Murrell, 61, the former husband of ex-first minister Nicola Sturgeon, is due to be sentenced later in June. Setting out the prosecution narrative on Wednesday morning, Alan Cameron KC said the money held…

The Trump administration may, for now, keep transgender people from newly joining the US military, a federal appeals court ruled, while also drawing a firm line against removing those already in uniform as the legal fight continues. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the 2025 policy was unlawfully driven "by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group". At the same time, the court said the Pentagon retains sweeping authority to decide who can enlist,…

An independent watchdog is expected to report within three months on why British police handcuffed murder victim Henry Nowak as he lay fatally wounded, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said, as pressure mounted for answers in a case that has shocked the country. Nowak, an 18-year-old student, was restrained by officers after he was stabbed by a Sikh man wielding a ceremonial knife. When police arrived at the scene in Southampton on 3 December 2025, his attacker, 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, claimed he had been targeted in a…

Yvette Cooper has said Peter Mandelson should "never have been appointed" ambassador to the United States, while sidestepping a direct question over whether Keir Starmer is a strong and effective leader. Speaking during a visit to Beijing, the British foreign secretary called the release of messages linked to Mandelson's appointment an "unedifying process", after the government published a second batch of documents running to more than 1,000 pages. Among the disclosures were messages awkward for ministers, including for Mr…