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The vice president then began singing the praises of Kaunda, a brutal socialist dictator allied with the Soviet Union, who had banned opposing political parties and ran as the only candidate for president until he was finally ousted, and praised Zambia’s “democracy”. Kaunda, whom Kamala fondly recalled meeting with JFK and MLK “to discuss peaceful forms of protest” had demanded nuclear weapons from LBJ. Hichilema, who had narrowly survived being arrested by a previous regime, had nothing to say about Kamala’s fond memories of Zambian democracy. Or the “peaceful forms of protest” carried on with nuclear missiles and terrorism. But...

China, Tanzania and Zambia signed an initial agreement to rehabilitate a decades-old railway aimed at improving the rail-sea transportation in resource-rich East Africa, Chinese state media said on Wednesday. President Xi Jinping witnessed the signing of the memorandum of understanding on refurbishing the 1,860 kms (1,156 mile) Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) railway with the Tanzanian and Zambian presidents, who were in Beijing attending the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation... The single-track TAZARA railway was built between 1970 and 1975 through an interest-free loan from China, offering a cargo transport route from Zambia's copper and cobalt mines to the sea on Tanzania's...

Shocking video captured the moment a 5-ton bull elephant in Zambia charged at a safari vehicle — flipping it over several times and killing an 80-year-old American woman during an expedition. The unidentified woman was among six tourists with the group Wilderness Zambia who were out on a photography tour Saturday when they came under attack by the crazed beast, the Telegraph reported. “At around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning the six guests were on the game drive when the vehicle was unexpectedly charged by the bull elephant,” Wilderness Zambia CEO Keith Vincent said in a statement

Apart from Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom executives are entirely non-white.. It’s certainly an interesting phenomenon. Rishi Sunak is serving as the Prime Minister of the UK. Pakistani Muslim settler Humza Yousaf has taken over as the First Minister of Scotland and Vaughan Gething (pictured above), an immigrant from Zambia, will become the First Minister of Wales. Apart from Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom executives are entirely non-white. It’s certainly an interesting phenomenon that reflects a rate of not only demographic, but political change in the UK, that has become more rapid than the rest of Europe. Part of it...

Wood artefacts rarely survive from the Early Stone Age since they require exceptional conditions for preservation; consequently, we have limited information about when and how hominins used this basic raw material1. We report here on the earliest evidence for structural use of wood in the archaeological record. [Very long article, but several excellent photos and illustrations]

Half a million years ago, earlier than was previously thought possible, humans were building structures made of wood, according to new research by a team from the University of Liverpool and Aberystwyth University. The research, published in the journal Nature, reports on the excavation of well-preserved wood at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dating back at least 476,000 years and predating the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens. The excavation team uncovering the wooden wedge Expert analysis of stone tool cut-marks on the wood show that these early humans shaped and joined two large logs to make...

The flight of money from Egypt has become a growing concern as many wealthy individuals seek to move money out of Egypt and keep their fortunes out of the eyes of the authorities. The Zambian Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) intercepted an aircraft carrying five million dollars in cash and over 100kg of suspected gold at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport near the capital Lusaka on August 14, according to several sources. Found on the plane were $5,697,700 in cash, five pistols, seven magazines, 126 rounds of ammunition, 602 pieces of suspected gold weighing 127.7 kg, and equipment for measuring gold. Later,...

Zambia's government has warned the opposition against holding anti-gay rights protests during US Vice-President Kamala Harris’s visit in the country. Opposition Patriotic Front (PF) party plans to hold protests ahead of democracy summit being hosted in the capital, Lusaka. Ms Harris will arrive in the southern Africa country on Friday and is scheduled to make an address at the summit - which is jointly being hosted by Zambia, the US, Costa Rica, Netherlands and South Korea. Some 50 opposition MPs have claimed, without evidence, that the event was part of an agenda to impose gay rights on Zambians. Amnesty International...

Spicy harissa paste from Tunisia, Morocco's Raï music, and Kalela dance from Zambia were selected to join United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO's) intangible cultural heritage list. The agency met in the Moroccan capital Rabat, to examine proposals for its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which aims to protect cultural traditions, practices, and knowledge. There was no debate over whether to include Tunisia's harissa - a paste made with sun-dried hot peppers, spices and olive oil, found in almost every restaurant in Tunisia and exported worldwide. The debates were longer for Kalela, a traditional dance that originated during...

The Zambian student was serving a jail sentence at a medium security prison on the outskirts of Moscow after being convicted of contravening Russian law, Kakubo said, without specifying the offense that occurred in April 2020. “The Zambian government has requested the Russian authorities to urgently provide information on the circumstances under which a Zambian citizen, serving a prison sentence in Moscow, could have been recruited to fight in Ukraine,” Kakubo said. It was not clear how the prisoner was recruited and by whom.... ussia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the circumstances of...

A 76- year- old man of Poya village in Shiwang’andu district has been assaulted by his wife and biological children on allegations that he was practicing witchcraft. Muchinga Province Deputy Police Commissioner, Lucky Munkondya, has confirmed the incident in an interview with Zambia News and Information Services (ZANIS) in Shiwang’andu today. Ms. Munkondya has identified the victim as Bernard Malama 76, of Poya village in chief Nkula’s chiefdom in Shiwang’andu and said the incident occurred on 15th March 2022. She said Malama was beaten by his biological children and his wife of the same residence following allegations of him practicing...

Secretary General. Joined by 34 other countries, the document enshrines the Trump administration’s pro-life diplomacy on the official record of the General Assembly. “The United States strongly supports the dignity of all human beings and protecting life from the moment of conception throughout the lifespan,” Ambassador Kelly Craft wrote to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres transmitting the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family. Following the letter, the declaration was issued as an official document of the United Nations last week and circulated on December 11, after having been translated into all six official UN languages....

Lusaka, Zambia (CNN)The trail of blood outside the warehouse door was the only immediate sign that a murder had taken place. But CCTV footage seized by police, and seen by CNN, revealed a brutal afternoon of carnage. At midday on Sunday, May 24, three Zambian attackers with iron bars entered the grounds of a Chinese-owned textile warehouse in Lusaka. Police said they were pretending to be potential customers. But the trio did not want to do business. Over the next 17 minutes, the CCTV footage shows, they beat two men and one woman to death in the courtyard, before dragging...

Griffith University scientists have led an international team to date the skull of an early human found in Africa, potentially upending human evolution knowledge with their discovery. The Broken Hill (Kabwe 1) skull is one of the best-preserved fossils of the early human species Homo heidelbergensis and was estimated to be about 500,000 years old... Discovered in 1921 by miners in Zambia, the Broken Hill remains have been difficult to date due to their haphazard recovery and the site being completely destroyed by quarrying. Using radiometric dating methods, Professor Grün’s analyses now puts the skull at a relatively young date,...

The US ambassador to Zambia has said he has been threatened over his comments on the sentencing of a gay couple, deepening a diplomatic row. Daniel Foote said he was "horrified" by the jailing of Japhet Chataba and Steven Samba. A judge quashed an appeal against their conviction last week, sentencing them both to 15 years in prison. Same-sex relationships are outlawed in Zambia, where British colonial-era laws on homosexuality still apply. Mr Foote implored the Zambian government to review the case and its homosexuality laws, but has since faced a backlash for doing so.

As Paul Wolfowitz battles to keep his position as president of the World Bank after a nepotism scandal, speculation mounts that the U.S. may lose its hegemony over appointing the poverty-fighting institution's leader. More - that perhaps it should stop appointing Americans. The Wall Street Journal became the second publication of repute to suggest Stanley Fischer for the position. His isn't the first name the paper suggests, but it makes a case that he's unique, in being a non-American born American that the member coutries of the World Bank might find "less divisive". The first was the London-based weekly The...

When relatives visited Brighton Kaoma’s childhood home in the Copperbelt Province of central Zambia, they’d come bearing gifts: oblong brown chikanda, freshly dug from the earth of the family’s ancestral village. The tubers weren’t from yams or potatoes. Instead, they were foraged from the wild orchids that dot the dambos, or grasslands, of northern Zambia, their ornate blossoms shocks of color in the marshy knolls Kaoma’s family, who belong to the Bemba people of Zambia’s Northern and North-Western Provinces, would grind the tubers with peanuts and chiles, then boil them with water and soda to form a cake. Also called...

Kenya runs the risk of losing control of the Port of Mombasa if it should default on loans from state financial institution China Exim Bank, according to a new report from Kenya's auditor general. The terms of a $2.3 billion loan for Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) specify that the port's assets are collateral, and they are not protected by Kenya's sovereign immunity due to a waiver in the contract. "The payment arrangement agreement substantively means that the Authority's revenue would be used to pay the Government of Kenya's debt to China Exim bank if the minimum volumes required for [rail]...

The United States must revamp policies toward Africa on improving trade, fighting terrorism, and providing financial assistance to stave off the growing influence of China and Russia on the continent, White House national security adviser John Bolton said. “Great power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa,” Bolton said Thursday in an address at The Heritage Foundation in Washington. “They are deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the United States.”[snip]“The predatory practices pursued by China and Russia stunt economic growth in Africa; threaten...

China offers development assistance but not everyone is happy about it. The people of Zimbabwe head to the polls today on July 30, 2018, to cast their votes in the first election after the abrupt end to the almost forty-year rule of Robert Mugabe, the country's only ruler since independence in 1980. The two major candidates to watch are Mugabe's former vice president and now leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Emerson Mnangagwa, the replacement for the late opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the candidate for the Movement for Democratic Change—Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Nelson Chamisa. The drama that...