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A man who stabbed a passenger in an unprovoked attack at Dublin Airport was acting out in a cry for help, a court has been told. Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today that Kasonga Mbuyi (52) stabbed a German man in an unprovoked attack. He was seen behaving erratically before the attack and wasn’t wearing shoes. Mbuyi, with an address at Clare Street, Limerick, was suffering from a paranoid delusion at the time and has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia with previous cannabis misuse. He told gardai (police) he carried out the unprovoked and random assault as a cry for...

Ndola is one of the most prominent towns in Zambia's Copperbelt province. Today, the numerous copper mines in the region provide the region's wealth. But in the past, a darker industry spurred the settlement. Still standing near the center of town, the Slave Tree was the central location where Swahili slave traders met to discuss their gruesome transactions. Under its shade, Swahili traders such as Chipembere, Mwalabu, and Chiwala held councils of war and sold enslaved people to the Mambundu from Angola. Much of central and southern Africa, including modern-day Zambia, was crisscrossed by slave traders transporting human captives...

KOLWEZI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Little about Kolwezi, a small city in southern Democratic Republic of Congo, hints at its global importance. Nondescript and ringed by slag heaps, pits and quarry lakes, the city is home to some of the largest copper and cobalt mines in the world. Now, Kolwezi is at the center of U.S.-Chinese competition over critical minerals. Earlier this year, mining firms began shipping ore along a U.S.-backed railway that terminates in Angola's Atlantic port of Lobito. A massive infrastructure project is focused on this rail line -- which is viewed as a bid to counter...

President Joe Biden toured the National Museum of Slavery in Angola’s capital of Luanda on Tuesday, delivering a speech in which he described slavery as America’s “original sin” and claiming it still taints American public discourse. “The United States is founded on an idea, one embedded in our Declaration of Independence, that all men and women are created equal. It is abundantly clear today we have not lived up to that idea, but we have not fully walked away from it either,” Biden said.

Angola announced Thursday that it's leaving the OPEC oil producers cartel, coming after it battled with the group over lower production quotas this year. Diamantino de Azevedo, the African nation's oil minister, said Angola “does not gain anything by remaining in the organization,” according to state news agency Angop. The country joined OPEC in 2007. Disagreements over lower oil quotas for some African countries, including Angola, led to an usual dayslong delay to OPEC's November meeting, where the group, along with allied producers led by Russia, decide how much oil to send to the world. At the meeting, Angola's production...

It is déjà vu for major oil producers, who are again considering steeper production cuts. It took only a month after the Hamas attacks on Israel unleashed a punishing war for oil prices to fall below their pre-Oct. 7 level. The steep drop in oil prices last week, with Brent crude briefly dropping to $77 per barrel, led to speculation that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers (OPEC+) will decide to cut production at its next meeting. OPEC’s last-minute decision to delay the meeting, now scheduled for Nov. 30, will only add to the speculation. U.S....

President Joe Biden on Wednesday bragged about his administration’s plans to build a solar farm in Africa that U.S. taxpayers are funding a $900 million loan for. Biden’s boast occurred during a speech hosted by the League of Conservation Voters, in which he promoted his administration’s energy and environmental policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a seemingly non-existent railroad from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean and “one of the largest solar plants in the world” in Angola. To fund this solar plant — which is a partnership between the Angolan government, and U.S.-based firms AfricaGlobal Schaffer and...

Over the past five years, the United States’ largest independent oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil, has mostly focused its exploratory activities in South America.Last month, the oil major announced that it had made two new discoveries at the Sailfin-1 and Yarrow-1 wells in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana, potentially adding more barrels to one of the most closely watched new oil discoveries. ExxonMobil has now made more than 30 discoveries on the block since 2015, and has ramped up offshore development and production at a pace that far exceeds the industry average.In contrast, Exxon’s exploits in Africa have been...

A 170-carat pink diamond – dubbed The Lulo Rose – was discovered at the Lulo mine in the country’s diamond-rich northeast and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors. The “historic” find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine. The diamond will be sold at international tender, likely at a dazzling price. Although The Lulo Rose would have to be cut and polished to realize its true...

Mexican authorities found the body of an Angolan migrant child who went missing on May 2 during an illegal border crossing near the Del Rio International Bridge. The young boy disappeared after being swept away along with his brother. The parents survived the crossing. Del Rio Station Border Patrol agents encountered an Angolan couple who illegally crossed the border from Mexico into Texas. The husband and wife informed the agents that their two boys, ages seven and nine, were swept away in the strong currents of the Rio Grande, according to information obtained from Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials.

The poor performance of Russian equipment deployed in the Ukraine war is bound to be giving global buyers second thoughts.How can it be that a large Russian army attacking force, capable of causing untold destruction, is being checkmated and systematically devastated by Ukraine’s military, in particular its special forces?And what impact will this have on the Russian army and its industrial backbone, the Russian companies that build the tanks, armored personnel carriers, mobile air defenses and aircraft including fixed-wing and helicopters ­– all of which have suffered extreme losses in the conflict?Russia’s exports consist of various commodities, most prominently wheat,...

A new species of tarantula was discovered in the southwestern African nation of Angola. What’s most intriguing about this new spider, called Ceratogyrus attonitifer, is the horn-like appendage protruding from its back. It belongs to the genus of Ceratogyrus (horned baboon spiders), yet scientists haven’t seen anything quite like this new species. The researcher who discovered the horned tarantula, John Midgley, showed photos of the arachnid to Ian Engelbrecht, an expert on spiders, and he didn’t believe the pictures were real at first. “I knew then we had discovered a new species,” Midgley told National Geographic. “It’s rare to know...

The Chinese government is in a massive resource grab in Africa, which has huge ramifications for natural resource prices, not the least of which will be the cost of imported oil to the U.S., and ultimately the stock market and economy. Beijing's latest foray is trying to buy 6 billion barrels of oil that is already spoken for via leases to Exxon, Chevron , Royal Dutch Shell, and Total SA. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. presently leases 16 oil blocks on what remains of the oil industry's dominant Seven Sisters. It's a monster development, and a dramatic signal of how...

Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 31, 2020   Officer Was Previously Convicted of Related Obstruction Offenses Daniel Davis, 44, a former major at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) in Angola, Louisiana, was found guilty by a jury yesterday in federal court for his participation in the beating of an inmate who was handcuffed, shackled, and not resisting and for failing to intervene to stop his subordinates from participating in the same beating. In a previous trial in January 2018, Davis was convicted of conspiring with other officers to cover up the beating by...

Nigeria has long been known for its oil riches. Angola has too, but decades of entrenched corruption have chased foreign investors away. Now Namibia is joining the African oil conversation with one of the most oil-friendly regimes on the continent. It’s offering 5% royalties on what might just be a very productive shale play in Reconnaissance Africa’s (RECO.V) Kavango Basin. Emerging markets are where oil upside might be found these days but navigating them is a challenge.

This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

New Book Demolishes Arab Armies of Sand “Arab armed forces consistently underperformed, and underperformed in the same ways time and again, regardless of who they fought or where, the state of their politics, or the relative state of economic development between them and their foe.” So concludes scholar Kenneth M. Pollack in his magisterial book on the cultural roots of disastrous post-1945 Arab military performance, Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness. Pollack presents an encyclopedic, withering critique of Arab militaries across decades in numerous varied conflicts, to substantiate the conclusion that: Arab militaries were...

... The threat of bringing in dangerous diseases is higher than ever, yet there are no mandatory and universal screenings, quarantines, or universal detention before illegal immigrants are released into our communities, often within hours. According to preliminary weekly data used internally by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and given to CR by a border patrol agent who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press, over 550 African migrants were apprehended in Texas in just one week - from May 30 through June 5. The lion's share come from Democratic Republic of Congo, the...

In an unprecedented move last week, India voted in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation named ‘Shahed’. This is the first time India has taken a step back from its decades-old position on the two-state theory under which New Delhi sees both Israel and Palestine as separate and independent countries, seeking to bring peace in West Asia.The vote, which took place on 6 June at the UN, saw countries such as US, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and Canada polling in favour of...

Chimpanzee meat is being served as a delicacy at British weddings and served as 'bush meat' on market stalls it has emerged. The border force is under pressure to introduce DNA testing to identify the meat at customs and has said it would be investing in new technology to tackle the rising issue. Leading primate scientist Dr. Ben Garrod had said he was told by customs officials just weeks ago that a ton of bush meat from West Africa had been confiscated on a flight bound for the U.S. He said it was routinely smuggled into Europe and the UK...