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A former flight attendant caught smuggling over 100 pounds of a deadly new synthetic drug made of human bones faces up to 25 years in a Sri Lankan prison.Charlotte May Lee, 21, from the United Kingdom, was seized at Bandaranaike Airport in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo earlier this month after allegedly carrying suitcases full of "kush," a new[-ish] drug originating in West Africa which kills an estimated dozen people a week in Sierra Leone alone.

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. military is stepping up operations in the Gulf of Guinea to enhance security in this strategic and resource-rich region, the commander of U.S. European Command's naval surface combatant warships told the Pentagon Channel. U.S. military engagement along southwestern Africa's Atlantic coast has increased exponentially, Capt. Tom Rowden, commander of Task Force 65, said during a Pentagon interview last week. It's increased from almost no activity in 2004 to 130 "ship days" in 2005 to even more planned ship days this year, he said. The goal is to build long-term relationships that promote greater security and...

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has rejected advice to cancel the second Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, over fears of the spread of the Ebola virus. Erdoğan has insisted on going ahead with the scheduled summit in order to display solidarity with the host country, Foreign Ministry officials told the Hürriyet Daily News. The Turkish president will attend the summit in Malabo on Nov. 20-21. Following the launch of Turkey’s “opening up to Africa" strategy, the country has transited to the phase of “partnership with Africa” since 2013, according to officials. Around 200 business leaders and...

BATA, Equatorial Guinea—Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon. Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade...

News 12 has obtained exclusive video showing the moments before a lost DoorDash driver was allegedly shot by an elected official in Orange County. The 24-year-old victim is seen on surveillance camera at a residence in Chester holding a plastic bag and his cellphone at approximately 9 p.m. on Friday, while state police say he attempted to find the correct delivery address. “I have DoorDash. My phone is broken. I need some help,” the unidentified DoorDash employee is heard saying during the recording. News 12 traced the dasher’s steps to one of the houses he tried in the Valerie Drive...

The National Museum of Denmark has confirmed that two 18th-century shipwrecks in Cahuita National Park, long thought to be pirate ships, are the Danish slave ships Fridericus Quartus and Christianus Quintus, which sank in 1710. The identification was announced on Sunday, resolving decades of speculation about the wrecks off Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. The ships were identified through underwater excavations in 2023, which analyzed ship timbers, cargo blocks, clay pipes, and other artifacts. In 2015, U.S. archaeologists from East Carolina University discovered yellow bricks, specific to Danish manufacturing in Flensburg, among the wreckage, prompting renewed investigation. The wrecks, located on...

Guinean soldiers said they had overthrown president Alpha Condé in an apparent military coup, less than a year after he won a controversial third term in the mineral-rich west African country. A group of armed men appeared on state television on Sunday dressed in fatigues and draped in national flags, declaring that Guineans were being mistreated by the country’s elites. “We are capable of taking our destiny in our own hands,” one of the soldiers said in the state TV broadcast, adding that the constitution would be dissolved and the borders closed for one week. But Guinea’s defence ministry said...

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...

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - A series of witnesses place six top al-Qaida fugitives in Africa buying up diamonds in the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a confidential report by UN-backed prosecutors obtained by The Associated Press. The first-person accounts detailed by the prosecutors add to long-standing claims that al-Qaida laundered millions of dollars in terror funds through African diamonds before launching its deadliest offensive. Al-Qaida figures, including some already wanted in pre-Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets, dealt directly with then-president Charles Taylor and other leaders and warlords in the West African country of Liberia from 1999...

Was Plane That Vanished From Angola the Same One That Crashed off Benin on Christmas Day? ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writ By Nafi Diouf and Published: Jan 2, 2004 DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June - a...

Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why. Launched in 1969, just a few months after humans first set foot on the Moon, Skynet-1A was put high above Africa's east coast to relay communications for British forces. When the spacecraft ceased working a few years later, gravity might have been expected to pull it even further to the east, out over the Indian Ocean. But today, curiously, Skynet-1A is actually half a planet away, in a position 22,369 miles (36,000km) above the Americas. Orbital mechanics mean it's unlikely the...

The gunman who opened fire on a Jewish man walking to synagogue in Chicago is an illegal migrant from West Africa who was released into the US last year — and he targeted the victim because of his faith, law enforcement sources tell The Post. Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22 — who hails from Mauritania — crossed into San Diego in March 2023 and was screened by border agents, who quickly released him into the US, officials said. Federal investigators believe Abdallahi was specifically targeting Jews in an antisemitic attack when he ambushed a 39-year-old Orthodox Jewish man in the city’s...

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”And yet, this analysis is wrong.For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.The group has been around since...

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo granted Ghanaian citizenship to the iconic American musician Stevie Wonder on Monday at a ceremony in Accra. Mr Wonder had indicated in a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, another prominent African American talk show host, that he intended to live indefinitely in Ghana to protect his grandchildren and great-grandchildren from racial discrimination in the United States of America.

Another Joe Biden foreign policy disaster is in the works. Joe Biden already turned over the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan to Taliban terrorists in September 2021. Biden abandoned Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years in July by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ secret departure more than two hours after they left. The Taliban quickly took control of Bagram Air Base, which is only 30 miles north of Kabul, on August 15th and released thousands of terrorists held at its prison. The Americans and Afghans...

Cars stolen from the District, Maryland, Virginia, and beyond are winding up in shipping containers, headed overseas, and it’s a problem that customs officials say is getting worse. Port of Baltimore Director Adam Rottman told FOX 5 that last fiscal year they intercepted 149 stolen cars, but in the last three months, that number is already at 70, on pace to just about double last fiscal year’s total. "Transnational criminal organizations will make money any way they can, whether it’s drugs, terrorism, human smuggling, selling fake Care Bears, anything they can do to make a dollar," Rottman told FOX 5,...

In accordance with section 506A(a)(3)(B) of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2466a(a)(3)(B)), I am providing advance notification of my intent to terminate the designation of the Central African Republic, the Gabonese Republic (Gabon), Niger, and the Republic of Uganda (Uganda) as beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). I am taking this step because I have determined that the Central African Republic, Gabon, Niger, and Uganda do not meet the eligibility requirements of section 104 of the AGOA. Specifically, the Government of the Central African Republic has engaged in gross violations...

Don’t imagine this is just an unprovoked, brutal attack by a bunch of terrorists from Gaza. It is much more than that. The hands that pushed these killers forward are in Moscow. US President Joe Biden and European leaders have long feared an escalation of the Ukraine war and that is what they’ve now got. Unwilling to take the fight directly to NATO, instead, Putin has been fomenting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Serbia and Kosovo, in West Africa and now in Israel. The instability created in these places is intended to pull US attention, as well as resources, away...

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis warned on Sunday that the conflict in Niger amid a looming deadline for coup leaders to cede power could potentially lead to a "full-blown war in Africa." The Sunday deadline established by a coalition of West African nations for Niger to return to democratic rule is set to expire. The demand has been shunned by fellow military-led countries Burkina Faso and Mali, who have jointly warned that any intervention would amount to a declaration of war.

To be honest, I’d never much thought about the Ebola lockdowns in Sierra Leone and Liberia in 2014 and 2015. Within public health, the Sierra Leone and Liberia lockdowns were an early illustration of the fact that lockdowns were ineffective, but governments of developing nations sometimes do strange things; the idea that these lockdowns might have greater geopolitical significance never occurred to me. This changed dramatically when I began studying social media activity about lockdowns before 2020. Prior to 2014, and from 2016 to 2019, there’s virtually no social media activity about lockdowns. However, this pattern changes abruptly during one...