Tag Archives: history

Washington, United States | AFP |  It is an elegant tradition: the outgoing US president leaves a letter for his successor in the aged oaken desk in the Oval Office, to be read upon his arrival. The letter left by Barack Obama for Donald Trump, revealed some seven months after …

Paris, France | AFP | The doctrine of nuclear deterrence, put to the test in the standoff between Washington and Pyongyang, dates to the Cold War when the world’s two superpowers seemed hellbent on “mutually assured destruction”. The arms race between United States and the then Soviet Union saw a proliferation …

  Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Though it is seen as the most democratic country in east Africa, Kenya is on a knife-edge because its opposition coalition is claiming election results are being rigged. Partial results from Tuesday’s general election released by the electoral commission (IEBC) show President Uhuru Kenyatta …

Pretoria, South Africa | AFP | A South African policeman present when an anti-apartheid operative plunged to his death more than 40 years ago insisted on Monday that the victim had jumped to his death. But the judge hearing the inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol warned him that he …

  Pretoria, South Africa | AFP |  Police brutality, “fake news” propaganda and official cover-ups at the height of apartheid have been laid bare in a South African court probing the death of a communist activist 46 years ago. Ahmed Timol, a 29-year-old anti-apartheid volunteer, was arrested in Johannesburg in …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | The brutal death of anti-apartheid campaigner Ahmed Timol was allowed to go quietly unsolved in the interests of South Africa’s democratic reconciliation. But now more than 45 years after he fell from a 10th-floor window at a notorious regime security building and died, Timol’s …

Over the next four days, AFP will move a series of stories marking the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and neighbouring Arab countries from June 5 to 10, 1967 ****** Jerusalem, Undefined | AFP |  The Arab-Israeli Six-Day War erupted early on Monday, June 5, 1967, a …

Umuahia, Nigeria | AFP | Nigeria on Tuesday marks 50 years since the declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra plunged the country into a civil war, amid renewed tensions and fresh calls for a separate state. The main pro-independence groups — the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and the …

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP |  Two decades after Kinshasa gave itself up willingly to rebel commander Laurent-Desire Kabila, his son Joseph remains at the helm of this vast, conflict-ravaged nation although his rule is mired in political crisis. Back in 1997, the country then known as Zaire was struggling …

Seoul, South Korea | AFP |  South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-In on Friday scrapped state-issued school history textbooks introduced by his ousted predecessor, saying they represented an “outdated and one-sided” view of the past, his office said. The previous Park Geun-Hye administration had introduced state-authored history textbooks at middle …