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This week, first lady Melania Trump is embarking on a trip to Africa, with stops in Ghana, Kenya, Egypt and Malawi. Details of her itinerary were not initially available, so we turned to two of our contributors, a public health worker who is originally from Ghana and a scientist from Kenya, for their suggestions in the form of a letter to the first lady. Make Time For Rural Life Welcome, to beautiful Kenya — the country I call home. Welcome to Africa, my mother continent. Most likely, you will be taken on a safari — because that is what every...

Named Ledumahadi mafube, the new dinosaur species weighed 12 tons, stood about 13 feet high at the hips, and is one of the closest relatives of sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods, weighing up to 60 tons, include well-known species like Brontosaurus. They ate plants and stood on four legs, with a posture like modern elephants.Ledumahadi mafube evolved its giant size independently from sauropods.“It shows us that even as far back as 200 million years ago, these animals had already become the largest vertebrates to ever walk the Earth,” said Professor Jonah Choiniere, a researcher in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University...

)If humans had lived 200 million years ago, they would have marveled at the largest dinosaur of its time. It's name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn." The recently discovered fossil of a new dinosaur species in South Africa revealed a relative of the brontosaurus that weighed 26,000 pounds, about double the size of a large African elephant. The researchers have named it Ledumahadi mafube, which is Sesotho for "a giant thunderclap at dawn." Sesotho is an official South African language indigenous to the part of the country where the dinosaur was found. "The name reflects the great size of...

The rock carvings -- known as petroglyphs -- have been discovered in their thousands atop hillocks in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra. Mostly discovered in the Ratnagiri and Rajapur areas, a majority of the images etched on the rocky, flat hilltops remained unnoticed for thousands of years... animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs are all depicted. The way the petroglyphs have been drawn, and their similarity to those found in other parts of the world, have led experts to believe that they were created in prehistoric times and are possibly among the oldest ever discovered. "Our first deduction...

Their fear faded as they raced back home, the bottle of Johnnie Walker getting lighter with each turn of the road. Soon, Sindiso Magaqa was clapping and bouncing behind the wheel of his beloved V8 Mercedes-Benz, pulling into familiar territory just before dark. Minutes later, men closed in with assault rifles. Mr. Magaqa reached for the gun under his seat — too late. One of his passengers saw flashes of light, dozens of them, from the spray of bullets pockmarking the doors. The ambush was exactly what Mr. Magaqa had feared. A few months before, a friend had been killed...

The virus moved near the Uganda border after a woman who had participated in burials of Ebola victims refused a vaccination in Beni and disappeared, local officials have said. She died on Sept. 20 at a hospital in Tshomia on Lake Albert, which separates the countries. see also Ebola deaths in Congo rise to 26, health ministry says The second confirmed Ebola case in Tshomia was the woman’s partner, WHO said. The U.N. refugee agency on Friday said it was “gravely concerned” for civilians’ safety in North Kivu, which has the highest number of displaced people in Congo with an...

US First Lady Melania Trump is set to head to Africa next week for a four-country tour. Melania outlined her first major solo trip abroad on Wednesday at a reception for United Nations General Assembly leader spouses. The first lady will be visiting Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt. “October 1 will mark the first day of my solo visit to four beautiful and very different countries in Africa – Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, and Egypt – all of which have worked alongside USAID and our partners to make great progress in overcoming some of their biggest challenges,” said Melania. During the...

he United Methodist Church's African bishops have recently reaffirmed their support for the traditional definition of marriage, as well as opposition over possible schism within the denomination. The UMC Africa College of Bishops released a statement Monday stemming from their official meeting held Sept. 3-7 in Freetown, Sierra Leone. According to their statement, the bishops held extensive discussions regarding the denomination's debate over homosexuality, which many believe may lead to the UMC splitting. "... we reaffirm our position as traditionalists and view marriage as union between Man and Woman as clearly defined in scripture and affirmed in our COB 2016...

President Donald Trump has done “irreparable” damage to the United States and is “impeachable,” regardless of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a House Democrat said Thursday. Texas Representative Al Green, who has forced two failed votes to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, renewed his call in an interview with Hill.TV. "What he has done to this society is harmful and in some cases it may be irreparable,” Green said on the media outlet’s Rising show. He gave the example of Trump telling “police officers that you don’t have to be nice, when you’re arresting someone.” "These are the kinds of...

It was brazen even by Liberian standards. Shipping containers carrying the equivalent of US $104 million in Liberian bank notes, ordered by the Central Bank from printers in Sweden and China, arrived at Liberia’s port and then vanished.

Hundreds of people are feared missing after a ferry capsized on Lake Victoria in north Tanzania. A local official told the BBC five people have died and 102 have been rescued, but another said that the vessel was overloaded with more than 400 people on board. The MV Nyerere ferry overturned near the shore between the islands of Ukora and Bugolora. Locals have joined with emergency teams in rescue efforts. The Tanzanian government has confirmed the ferry capsized but exact figures for those on board are yet to be confirmed. "We pray to God to give us hope in...

If you ever live at the shore, one thing that crops up in 13-year cycles is what they call Red Tide. The traditional explanation I have always heard is that is caused by farming and the runoff of their pesticides that contaminate the water. I use to hear that in New Jersey and the same thing in Florida. It seems to be linked to the same people who promote Global Warming who want us to starve and stop driving to work. I would ask, where is the runoff from farmers when there are none in this area? It would go...

Pictures of the snow covered creatures have swept across social media as viewers marvel at the bizarre scenes. Kitty Viljoen captured elephants enjoying the snow in the Sneeuberg on the Western Cape of South Africa, where snow hit late last week. Sneeuberg translates to Snow Mountain and dustings are not unusual across parts of South Africa in the winter, but this cold snap comes particularly late in the season. She also photographed giraffes in snow in the Karoo semi-desert region.

Founder of Ambassadors Mission International Incorporated in Aba, Abia State, Reverend Sylvester Nmanwoke, has predicted that President Donald Trump of the United States (U.S.) will not finish his first term in office. Nmanwoke, who is also President, Apostolic Faith Mission Shekinah International Incorporated (AFM), said America should expect some strange events like fire from the sky that would consume millions of its citizens. Speaking in Lagos at a World Press Conference tagged: President Donald Trump Will Not Finish His First Term, he stressed that Trump is a proud man, who is not born again. He also revealed that former President...

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in two eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a major international trading hub with almost a million residents, Congolese health officials said Wednesday. Health officials in Butembo, a city with close links to neighboring Uganda, said they had confirmed that a man who died at Butembo University Hospital had tested positive for the virus. The Congolese health ministry said the man had contact with an Ebola patient in Beni, a city about 25 miles north of Butembo where almost two dozen Ebola victims have been identified, before...

China has promoted its massive global infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative, with dancing children singing a propaganda pop song, an animated rap and TV bedtime stories with tinkly background music on how “it helps everyone.” “We’ll share the goodness now, the Belt and Road is how,” the children sing in a 2017 video about President Xi Jinping’s foreign policy cornerstone. But lately the government’s big spending in Africa and elsewhere faces a growing domestic backlash, from leading academics to everyday Chinese on social media websites. “Why is China, a country with over 100 million people who are still...

Africa's population is soon going to "double" and "whatever the circumstances" will mass migrate to Europe -- "and that is a good thing," according to the executive director of Bono's "ONE" NGO. "As Africa's population doubles, a lot of them, whatever the circumstances, will be coming to Europe, as economic migrants or as refugees, they will be coming, many of them," ONE co-founder Jamie Drummond told the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade and Defence last year. "And that is a good thing." "Because we will be senile," Drummond said. "We will be senescent demographically. We'll need their youthful...

The Pentagon is considering withdrawing nearly all American commandos from Niger in the wake of a deadly October ambush that killed four United States soldiers. Three Defense Department officials said the plans, if approved by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, would also close military outposts in Tunisia, Cameroon, Libya and Kenya, as well as seven of the eight American elite counterterrorism units operating in Africa. The shift in forces is part of the Pentagon’s defense strategy to focus on threats from China and Russia. But they represent a more severe cut of Special Operations forces in Africa than initially expected, leaving...

Fulani Muslim militants launched raids on eight villages burning alive a Christian pastor, wife and three of their children. Islamic raiders, with machetes and AK47 rifles, looted destroying 95 houses, farmland and three churches. They killed Pastor Adamu Gyang Wurim and his family by setting fire to their house while them inside and shot his wife. Also, two villagers killed &wounding several others. Local lawyer, Dalyop Solomon Mwantiri, spoke with one of three surviving pastor's children away at University that learned of it on Facebook. "When I called a friend to find out about the situation, the report I received...

President Donald Trump’s promotion of a white nationalist conspiracy theory involving South Africa prompted fierce backlash there Thursday and fresh criticism in the United States that he is compromising American foreign policy to stoke his far-right political base. Former U.S. diplomats and South African leaders denounced Trump’s declaration in a tweet late Wednesday that he had instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to monitor the “large scale killing” of white farmers and the government’s expropriations of their land. White nationalist groups have for years spread false claims about the murder rates, which have been widely debunked. Local police data show...