Author: Frank Allison

The United States imposed sanctions on several top Malian officials this week, saying they facilitated activities of the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenary unit that recently staged a brief mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts say the sanctions are meant to send a message to the Malian government. Mali’s military government Wednesday criticized the sanctions on high-ranking members of the army accused of facilitating Wagner Group activities in the country, as Mali continues its decade-long fight against Islamist militants. A statement was read on state TV station ORTM by presenter Mah Camara, and later posted to the station’s Facebook…

Amid a renewed push for answers, archeologists plan to resume digging for student remains at the site of a former Native American boarding school. Amid a renewed push for answers, archeologists planned to resume digging Tuesday at the remote site of a former Native American boarding school in central Nebraska, searching for the remains of children who died there decades ago. The search for a hidden cemetery near the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska gained renewed interest after the discovery of hundreds of children’s remains at Native American boarding school sites in the U.S. and Canada since 2021, said Dave Williams,…

The Alaska Military Youth Academy, or AMYA, is a nearly 30 year old program where some struggling Alaska high school teenagers can turn their lives around. Its most recent class graduated on June 15, including some cadets who could have future military careers ahead of them. Jackie Tinker of Kasigluk said that the program is rigorous. “It’s been difficult for the past 22 weeks. Or actually, I adapted, like, week 10. I got used to living in the academy so much that I don’t want to leave,” Tinker said. Tinker is seventeen and has five siblings: four sisters and one…

Robert De Niro sounds excited for his friend and former co-star Al Pacino to be joining him in the senior dad’s club. De Niro, who is 79, welcomed a daughter named Gia in April with girlfriend Tiffany Chen. During a press junket Wednesday for his Tribeca Film Festival, De Niro was asked about the news that Pacino, 83, is set to become a father again with Noor Alfallah, who is 29. “What a guy,” People reported De Niro as saying. “Go Al, God bless him.” But it appears De Niro may have misunderstood the question as the next day during an appearance…

A Chinese warship came within 150 yards of hitting American destroyer USS Chung-Hoon, during a rare joint Canada-U.S. mission sailing through the Taiwan Strait, the latest aggressive military move from Beijing in the South China Sea. Global News has been travelling on HMCS Montreal, the Canadian frigate participating in the mission, since May 25 in the South China Sea and witnessed the near collision from the bridge wing of the ship. A People’s Liberation Navy ship picked up considerable speed and cut in front of the bow of the Chung-Hoon, a maneuver HMCS Montreal’s commander, Capt. Paul Mountford, called “not professional.” When the Chinese vessel altered its course, Mountford says the crew called…

The Philippines and the United States have agreed to finalize their plans of conducting joint naval sails in the waters encompassing the Indo-Pacific region, the Department of National Defense (DND) bared Saturday, April 29. (President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. witnesses the sinking exercise between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and United States Armed Forces where troops try to sink BRP Pangasinan by firing a variety of weapons as part of Exercise Balikatan 2023 in San Antonio, Zambales on April 26, 2023. File photo via Manila Bulletin) It was DND Officer in Charge (OIC) Senior Undersecretary Carlito Galvez Jr. who pitched…

Activists in Wollongong are organising against plans for nearby Port Kembla to host the East Coast base for the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Solidarity spoke to Alexander Brown from Wollongong Against War and Nukes about local opposition and how unions have dedicated this year’s May Day march to opposing the plan The cost is around $10 billion for an East Coast submarine base. The Treasurer says they can’t afford the $24 billion required to increase Centrelink payments above poverty levels and yet they can afford to spend $10 billion on a war base. And that’s a small part of the overall…

Two significant statements released over the past two months have sounded the alarm on the state of medical care at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre. In March, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a letter from seven UN experts criticising the inadequate medical care provided to detainees, noting “systematic shortcomings in medical expertise, equipment, treatment and accommodations”. Then, in April, in a break with traditional protocol, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) echoed the UN experts’ concerns and urged the United States to “find adequate and sustainable solutions … as a matter of priority”. The ICRC very rarely comments…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Warring factions trying to seize control of the east African nation of Sudan have plunged the country into chaos, and thousands are fleeing the capital of Khartoum and nearby battle zones. Some countries, including the U.S., have shuttered their embassies and many are coordinating daring evacuations of their staffs and other residents in an array of convoys, flights and frantic getaway drives. But over the past week there have been dramatically different responses by various governments as they try to get their citizens and embassy personnel to safety. The U.S. has come under scrutiny for evacuating roughly 70 embassy staff in a helicopter…

China has struggled to gain support from its Central Asian neighbors to build the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway since the 1990s. The CKU railway is crucial to China for two interconnected purposes—to advance its geopolitical interests and to secure favorable relations with Central Asian elites for their support over Chinese legitimacy in Xinjiang (East Turkestan). Originally signed in 1997 with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, the CKU railway came alongside China’s own Great Western Development Strategy, a domestic initiative officially announced in 1999 (though many of its infrastructure projects had already begun several years prior). This was aimed at bringing resources located in its Western territories…