pressure

Trump orders blockade of ‘sanctioned oil tankers’ bound for Venezuela, escalating standoff with Maduro WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered what he called a “total and complete blockade” of all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of Venezuela, a sweeping move that intensifies U.S. pressure on Nicolás Maduro and raises fresh legal and military questions about enforcement in the Caribbean. The announcement, delivered in a late-night social media post, came days after U.S. forces seized an oil tanker…

North Western State of Somalia, Somalia and the politics of the skies: Why a digital visa is touching a raw nerve Airspace rarely makes front-page news until it does. In the Horn of Africa, where borders are contested and history weighs heavy, the latest salvo isn’t happening on the ground but in the air—and online. North Western State of Somalia’s Minister of the Presidency, Khadar Hussein Abdi, has accused Somalia’s federal government of waging a “war” over air travel and airspace, claiming the aim is to pressure North…

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…

Alarming Findings in Somali Maternal Health Raise Urgent Questions In Mogadishu, the echoes of a concerning narrative are reverberating through the bustling corridors of the Somalia Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Training and Research Hospital. Recent findings reveal a stark reality facing Somali women: more than three-quarters of those undergoing cesarean sections with spinal anesthesia are experiencing dangerous dips in blood pressure. This revelation comes from a new study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, shedding…

Iran has recently hinted at a willingness to engage in dialogue with Donald Trump, urging the president-elect to reconsider his administration's policies toward the nation following accusations from the US that Iran had plotted to assassinate him. Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Vice President for Strategic Affairs, encouraged Mr. Trump to rethink the "maximum pressure" strategy he pursued during his initial term, which many believe exacerbated tensions between the two nations. "Trump needs to demonstrate that he won’t be…

In a move egged on by Western allies, Kenya's leadership has nudged the International Monetary Fund to dive deep into examining its murky corridors of power riddled with graft, as revealed by a couple of folks in the know to Reuters. This kind of probe, tagged officially as a "governance diagnostic," can only kick off with the asking of the respective country. It's the IMF's way of sniffing out how corruption and shaky governance might be sapping a nation’s coffers dry or wreaking havoc on the financial commonwealth. "In…

The "We Supported Too Much" movement (OTS), which launched the "dead chalk" operation on February 21, has still not lifted its strike slogan. Other teachers, especially those in primary school who had been relatively behind until then, have also joined the…

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble is again under pressure to issue a statement on the disappearance of young soldiers who are said to be training in Eritrea, but whose parents have questioned their parents. Over the past four months, hundreds of parents have demonstrated in Somalia, demanding to know the whereabouts of the young soldiers, who were reportedly airlifted to Eritrea in 2019-2020 for training. The government has remained silent although it admits that indeed soldiers are training…

In a letter dated Monday, President Mohamad al-Mnaffi called on Prime Minister Abdel Hamid Dbeibah to quickly appoint a defense minister. The post has been vacant since the government's announcement in March last year due to its sensitive nature, and both sides want to take up the post. Abdel Hamid Dbeibah is invited to a…

In Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari visited the large city of Maiduguri on Thursday, June 17, in northeastern Nigeria, one and a half years after his last visit, in February 2020. An expressive but very symbolic excursion, as the security situation is deteriorating day by day across Nigeria. as reported from Lagos, Liza…