Nov 18(Jowhar)-Ra’iisul Wasaaraha Xukuumadda Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Mudane Xamze Cabdi Barre, ayaa magacaabay Maareeyaha Guud ee Arrimaha Maamulka iyo Amniga Garoonka Muqdisho iyo Agaasime Ku-xigeenka Guud ee Xarunta Qaran ee Tubsan.
Muxuu madaxweynaha Ukraine kala soo kulmay madaxweyne Trump?
Nov 18(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky iyo dhigiisa Mareykanka Donald Trump ayaa Jimcihii ku kulmay Aqalka Cad, iyaga oo ka wada hadlay taageerada militari ee Mareykanka iyo suurtogalnimada in Ukraine la siiyo gantaallaha ridada dheer ee Tomahawk ee awoodda u leh in ay gaadhaan gudaha Ruushka.
US jury finds French bank facilitated atrocities in Sudan
The Verdict That Echoed Across Continents
In a Manhattan courtroom this week, a jury of eight people rendered a decision that sounded less like a ledger entry and more like a thunderclap: France’s banking giant BNP Paribas was found to have aided genocide in Sudan by providing financial services that, according to the jury, violated U.S. sanctions.
The award—more than $20 million to three survivors who fled Sudan and now live in the United States—was not just a number. It was a judgment steeped in stories of fire, smoke, and loss. It was testimony from two men and one woman who recounted being tortured, burned with cigarettes, cut with knives and, in the woman’s case, sexually assaulted.
Faces Behind the Ruling
The plaintiffs did not stand as abstractions. They arrived in court carrying the language of survival: memories of villages emptied by Janjaweed militias, of fields left fallow, of family photos singed and gone. “I watched my brother fall,” one plaintiff said, her voice tight with memory. “We hid under a tree while the trucks came. Money bought those trucks.”
Their attorney, Bobby DiCello, told reporters afterward that the verdict represented more than personal compensation. “This is a victory for justice and accountability,” he said. “The jury recognized that financial institutions cannot turn a blind eye to the consequences of their actions. Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fueled by U.S. dollars that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped.”
A spokesperson for BNP Paribas responded with a statement passed to AFP: “This ruling is clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds to appeal the verdict, which is based on a distortion of controlling Swiss law and ignores important evidence the bank was not permitted to introduce.” The bank’s lawyers have already signaled they will take the case to higher courts.
How a Bank Becomes Part of a War
To understand how a bank ended up in a genocide trial, you need to read the ledger as part of a landscape of commerce. BNP Paribas, one of Europe’s largest banks, operated in Sudan from the late 1990s until 2009, providing letters of credit that allowed Khartoum to honor its import and export commitments.
These financial guarantees—paper assurances that a seller will get paid—are the plumbing of global trade. In this case they helped Sudan keep cotton, oil and other commodities moving to overseas buyers. The plaintiffs and their lawyers argued those transactions funneled billions into a government campaign that targeted specific ethnic communities in Darfur and elsewhere.
“A letter of credit looks innocuous,” said Professor Mira Al-Najjar, an international finance expert at a New York law school. “But when those letters keep government coffers filled, they can sustain militarised repression. Banking isn’t neutral when it props up machinery of violence.”
Numbers That Matter
- Jury size: 8 members.
- Award: Over $20 million to three plaintiffs.
- BNP Paribas’ Sudan activity: late 1990s to 2009, according to court filings.
- Darfur conflict estimates: The war beginning in 2003 has been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions—figures that international bodies and humanitarian groups have long debated but agree are devastating in scale.
Voices from the Diaspora
In Brooklyn and Minneapolis, in London and Khartoum, the verdict punctured a quiet that many refugees had carried for years. Layla Hassan, who fled Darfur in 2005 and now runs a community center in Queens, said the ruling felt like recognition: “For so long, our pain was only whispered. Today, people with power—people with numbers and papers—had to hear those whispers and say, ‘You are not invisible.’”
Another survivor, speaking outside the courthouse, was more wary. “Money cannot bring back children,” he said. “But it can remind the world of what it did not stop.”
What This Case Signals Globally
The trial sits at the intersection of three larger currents sweeping the global order: the increasing willingness of courts to hold corporations accountable for human-rights harms, the complexities of sanctions enforcement, and the opaque role of finance in modern conflict.
Legal scholars say this case could widen the aperture through which we view corporate responsibility. “We’re witnessing a shift,” said Daniel Koehler, a human-rights lawyer who has worked on corporate accountability cases in Europe. “Companies can no longer hide behind jurisdictional boundaries and banking formalities when their services materially advance mass atrocities.”
At the same time, governments have leaned more heavily on economic tools—sanctions, asset freezes, trade restrictions—as instruments of foreign policy. Those tools rely on banks to execute or block transactions, making financial institutions both instruments of and potential bulwarks against state violence.
Questions for the Reader
When should a bank say no? How much diligence is enough to prevent a letter of credit from becoming a pipeline to terror? And what is the moral accounting when profits meet power?
Ask yourself: Do we assume the financial world is detached from the blood and soil of conflict zones? Or is it time to acknowledge that wire transfers and letters of credit can be as consequential as bullets?
Local Color and Human Cost
Darfur’s savannahs, once patterned with millet fields and nomadic herds, have the quiet of places emptied too quickly. Stories from survivors are specific and granular: the taste of smoke in a child’s hair, the rusted roar of militia trucks, the sudden absence of a neighbor who used to repair broken hoes. Cotton fields that fed families became commodities on foreign ships’ manifests.
“My father used to sing to the cotton,” one plaintiff recalled. “We sold the cotton to pay for weddings, for medicine. Then the same cotton bought guns.”
What Comes Next
BNP Paribas has vowed to appeal. The bank’s legal team will argue procedural errors and point to legal complexities—Swiss law, international banking norms, and the tangled web of contracts that move across borders.
For the survivors, appeals will mean more waiting. But even if the award is overturned, the verdict has a life beyond the courtroom: it sets a precedent in public conscience. There is a rhythm to accountability that runs far beyond legal briefs—press releases, board meetings, reputational risk and, sometimes, policy reform.
“No verdict undoes our lives,” one plaintiff said softly. “But it opens a door. Maybe another family will not have to sit where we sat.”
Final Reflections
We live in an era where capital moves at the speed of light, but consequences lag. The BNP Paribas verdict asks us to bridge that gap—to make moral sense of financial flows and to consider whether the systems we rely on for trade and credit should bear a clearer duty of care.
What responsibility should global banks accept when their services can tip the balance between civilian life and mass violence? How should societies balance the expediencies of commerce with the imperative to prevent harm?
Questions, not easy answers, are what courts and communities will wrestle with next. Whatever the legal outcome on appeal, this case has already rewritten the conversation: it placed at the center of American jurisprudence the idea that a bank’s pages of signatures and guarantees can, in some circumstances, be measured against the lives they help—or harm.
Kremlin Abuzz at Prospect of a Trump-Putin Meeting
The Summit That Sparked a Kremlin Rally: How a Single Phone Call Became a Storyline
The midday news opener on Russia’s most-watched state channel felt less like information and more like curtain-raising: “Donald Trump has heard Vladimir Putin — a bad sign for warmongers,” the announcer intoned, voice steady, the map of Europe glowing behind him.
It was a line designed to do everything that modern propaganda does best: condense a complicated diplomatic moment into a moral fable, draw clear heroes and villains, and invite viewers to feel both vindicated and threatened. Three and a half years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state television presented a simple thesis — the warmongers are not in Moscow; they are in Brussels, London and Berlin. The friend, on the other hand, is the one who picks up the phone.
Why Hungary?
When word slipped out that a face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Russian leaders might be prepared in “the coming days,” according to an aide to Vladimir Putin, chatter quickly converged on a single name: Budapest. “Hungary has always been the voice of wisdom and peacekeeping in Europe,” Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s close economic envoy, said in a statement that was aired repeatedly across pro-government outlets.
It’s a neat narrative arc. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s conservative prime minister, has often been painted as the troublesome sibling in the European family — skeptical of sanctions, courting Russian investment, and wary of any policy that might unmoor his domestic agenda. For Moscow, calling a summit in Hungary plays like theatre: a picturesque Central European capital, a hospitable host, and the implicit message that not all of Europe is rowing in the same direction.
Stagecraft and Signals
These summits are as much about optics as they are about outcomes. A handshake in a silk-paneled room, waves caught on-camera, a joint photo op — those images rewrite headlines and remake reputations. “Putin thrives on the ritual of summitry,” an American foreign policy analyst told me. “Every face-to-face meeting is, for him, an act of legitimation. It signals he’s not a pariah but a player.”
For many Kremlin commentators, the meeting itself is a strategic score. “A personal meeting is arguably his favourite thing to do,” said one commentator on the popular program Time Will Tell, where three-hour panels of pundits and political guests parse every whisper out of the Kremlin. “It elevates him globally.”
What the Kremlin Is Selling
Across Russia’s pro-government media there’s a steady, repeated argument: that the U.S. — or at least a U.S. leader willing to speak directly to Putin — represents a corrective to a quarrelsome and increasingly isolated Europe. Britain and Germany, for example, have been singled out for criticism as the supposed engines of escalation. “They moved the locomotive of war,” a repeat line on morning shows suggested, in language meant to conjure hubristic empire-builders.
The rhetorical pivot is simple. Europe is cast as the coalition of “warmongers,” the U.S. as the pragmatist or at least the debater, and Hungary as the calm, steady voice. In opinion pieces and talk shows, a phrase like “coalition of losers” is trotted out to describe Ukraine’s allies — a clear counterpoint to the earlier Western talk of a “coalition of the willing.”
How the Narrative Lands in Budapest
Walk the Danube embankment in Budapest and you’ll find people nodding, shrugging, or furrowing their brows at the idea of hosting great-power choreography. “If it brings a chance to stop the killing, why not?” said Anna K., a 62-year-old history teacher sipping espresso near the Parliament. “But we also know how the show works — it doesn’t mean promises are kept.”
A street vendor selling paprika and postcards laughed ruefully when I asked whether Hungarians relish the attention. “We like visitors,” he said, “but we are not props in someone else’s fight.”
Smoke, Mirrors—and a Negotiating Playbook
Beyond the pageantry, analysts warn there is a familiar pattern in Moscow’s diplomacy: charm, delay, and revision. “There’s a formula — flattery first, then evasion,” a seasoned diplomat with experience on Eastern European files told me. “You leave the summit with pictures and statements. You often don’t leave with the concessions or mechanisms that end a war.”
That has been the frequent complaint from Kyiv and many Western capitals: meetings without sustainable tracks for de-escalation or enforceable mechanisms. At the same time, to Russia, a summit with the U.S. leader — especially if the leader is presented domestically as congenial — rewrites the argument about isolation. It says: Russia remains a country whose word matters.
What’s at Stake: Beyond Choreography
Ask yourself: are we watching diplomacy or theatre? The answer matters because the human toll does not perform on cue. Since February 24, 2022, the war in Ukraine has displaced millions, shattered lives, and redrawn security calculations across Europe. International monitors and humanitarian agencies have documented enormous civilian suffering — the kind that a hand-written communique can’t erase.
“Summits can quiet headlines for a day,” said a humanitarian worker who has worked in Ukrainian displacement camps. “But without concrete, verified steps — ceasefires, withdrawal, humanitarian corridors — the cameras won’t stop the suffering.”
Echoes of a Larger Crisis
What plays out in television studios and state bulletins connects to deeper themes: the fragility of alliances in polarized times, the performative power of leadership, and the way information channels shape public belief. An electorate that relies on a single dominant source of news is especially vulnerable to narratives that simplify complexity into winners and losers.
And there is another layer: the domestic politics that both shape and are shaped by these international dramas. Leaders use summits to burnish profiles at home. Public diplomacy becomes campaign fodder, and foreign policy becomes a stage for domestic validation.
Questions to Take Away
So where does that leave the rest of us? Does a meeting in Budapest mark a turning point, a pause, or simply a new sequence of managed expectations? Will images of handshakes be followed by enforceable actions that ease suffering, or will they be another episode in a long-running series of diplomatic theatre?
Those are questions best answered by what comes after the cameras are packed away: the paper, the clauses, the monitoring teams, and, most importantly, the lived experience of people on the ground.
As one Ukrainian volunteer put it to me over a late-night phone call: “Photos are nice. Food on the table is nicer.” It’s a blunt way to remind us that the real metric of diplomacy should not be how it looks but who it helps.
Bolton Pleads Not Guilty in Alleged Improper Handling of Classified Documents
Outside the courthouse: a man in a dark blue suit and a country in uneasy quiet
The morning in Greenbelt, Maryland, felt ordinary — brisk, with the smell of coffee and the distant drone of commuter traffic — until the crowd noticed the black SUV pull up. John Bolton, 76, stepped out in a dark blue suit and maroon tie, a familiar profile from cable news and Sunday talk shows made suddenly small by the courthouse steps and the soft hush of a dozen phones raising to record him.
He walked in without fanfare, did not stop to take questions, and when called by the judge offered three words that landed like a punctuation mark: “Not guilty, your honor.” Within hours he was released on his own recognizance. A federal hearing is set for November 21.
There was theater in the choreography — reporters craning their necks, legal aides rustling papers — but there was also something quieter and more consequential at work. This is not simply another courtroom drama. It is a moment that forces us to ask: what happens when questions of national security collide with the messy human business of memoir-writing, political vendetta, and the law?
The charges: Espionage Act and the count of details
The indictment filed in federal court in Maryland sets out a serious legal architecture: eight counts of transmission of national defense information and ten counts of retention of national defense information, all under the Espionage Act. Each count carries a statutory maximum of up to ten years in prison, though any eventual sentence would be shaped by judges weighing a range of mitigating and aggravating factors.
Prosecutors allege that some of the material Bolton had in his possession — notes from intelligence briefings, details about meetings with senior officials and foreign leaders — was shared with two relatives and discussed for potential inclusion in a book. Those relatives are not identified in the charging documents.
“The law is blunt about unauthorized disclosure of classified material,” said a federal prosecutor familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity. “What courts will sort out is intent and whether procedures for handling classified material were followed.”
Why the Espionage Act matters
The Espionage Act, a statute born in 1917 during the turbulence of World War I, is not a casual piece of legislation. In modern times it has been used selectively — against whistleblowers, leaks of classified information, and in high-profile cases such as those involving Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange.
“It’s a blunt instrument,” said a legal scholar who studies national security and free speech. “Applied to former officials who publish memoirs, it raises fraught questions: did they circumvent the pre-publication review process? Did they retain material they shouldn’t have? Or is it a prosecutorial overreach that chills legitimate discussion about governance?”
Context and timing: not just about one man
There is something distinctly political about the timing and the optics. Bolton, a hawkish national security adviser during the first term of the current president, became one of the administration’s most outspoken critics after leaving the White House and later published a memoir describing the president as unfit for office.
He is the latest of several high-profile figures aligned against or critical of the president to face legal scrutiny in recent weeks — a sequence that has generated heated debate about whether legal institutions are being used to settle political scores.
“This feels like a turning point in how norms that previously insulated federal law enforcement from politics are being tested,” said a retired prosecutor who worked on national security cases. “We’re watching institutions that are supposed to be independent get pressure from political actors. Whether that pressure produces legitimate cases or not will be for a court to determine.”
Voices from the courthouse and the neighborhood
Outside, voices ranged from weary resignation to genuine curiosity. “I came to see history,” said Maya Thompson, a retired schoolteacher who lives three blocks from the courthouse. “I don’t agree with everything he’s said, but I worry about using national security as a cudgel.”
“If someone leaked classified material, they ought to be held accountable,” said a former military analyst in town for the hearing. “But if every breach turns into a headline trial, we need to be precise about what we’re prosecuting.”
Another neighbor, who asked not to be named, sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “We’re tired of living in permanent courtroom season,” she said. “It’s like politics turned into sport and we’re all spectators.”
Defense and denial: lawyering up and saying no
Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, told reporters and in court that Bolton did not unlawfully share or store any information. “My client complied with the law and the mandatory review process to the best of his knowledge,” Lowell said in a brief statement outside the courthouse. “We will vigorously defend against these charges.”
President Trump, when asked to comment, offered a terse dismissal: “He’s a bad guy,” the president said, underscoring the partisan intensity that already colors public perception. Whether that intensity will influence legal proceedings remains the central worry for observers on both sides.
Bigger questions: national security, free speech, and the memoir economy
How should a democracy balance competing values — the imperative to protect secrets that can put lives at risk, versus a free press and former officials’ right to tell their stories? The pre-publication review process for ex-officials is meant to be a safety valve, but it often sits uneasily with publishers hungry for revelation and with authors who see public interest in candid accounts.
More broadly, this case intersects with global concerns about the rule of law and the weaponization of legal systems. Around the world, we have seen governments use courts to pressure critics and to erode institutional independence. The question for voters and courts here is whether this is an instance of legitimate accountability — or a politicized turn that will have chilling consequences for whistleblowers, journalists, and former officials alike.
What to watch next
- The November 21 hearing, which will begin to set the procedural terms of the case and perhaps point toward whether there will be a trial.
- Legal filings from both sides that will reveal how prosecutors plan to prove that classified material was unlawfully handled and how the defense will argue about intent and process.
- Whether the case prompts calls for clearer rules about how former officials handle classified material and the pre-publication review process for books and memoirs.
Invitation to the reader
What do you think? When does national security justify criminal charges, and when does accountability become a curtain hiding political retribution? This is more than legal wrangling — it’s a conversation about what kind of democracy we want, how we preserve the integrity of institutions, and how we reconcile secrecy with the public’s right to know.
As the courthouse doors close for the day, the story will run through legal briefs and editorial pages. But it started — like most significant moments in democracy — with people: a former official, a judge, a neighborhood, and a nation trying, imperfectly, to hold to its own rules. Stay tuned; the next chapter begins in November.
Putin and Hungary’s PM Viktor Orbán Talked About Plans for Trump Summit
When Two Giants Whisper in Budapest’s Shadow
There is a curious hush that befell parts of Budapest the morning the idea of a new summit first leaked to the press — not the hushed reverence of tourists before the Parliament building, but a different silence, the kind that happens when history shifts like ice underfoot.
On one end of that tremor were phone lines between Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán; on the other were the White House corridors where Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky planned separate, urgent conversations. In the middle: Hungary, its broad Danube, the Chain Bridge, and a capital suddenly cast as a possible stage for a meeting that could redraw diplomatic lines over Ukraine.
Why Budapest?
On paper, Budapest makes sense. It is in NATO territory yet politically closer to Moscow than many of its neighbors, thanks to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s long-standing rapport with Russia. The Kremlin, relaying the call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Orbán, said the Hungarian leader told Mr. Putin he was ready to provide the “necessary conditions” to host a summit.
“We can be the place where difficult talks happen,” a Hungarian government official told local reporters, declining to be named. “We have the infrastructure, the security, and — more importantly — the political will.”
The European Union signaled cautious openness. “If a meeting can help bring peace to Ukraine, we welcome it,” an EU spokesperson said at a briefing — a conditional embrace that captures the tension in Brussels between hope and dread.
Conversations, Cruise Missiles, and Calculus
The immediate context is raw and urgent: Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin agreed to “another summit” after a short phone conversation described by the Kremlin as “extremely frank and trustful.” President Trump called his own exchange with Mr. Putin “very productive” and said he hoped to hold separate but equal meetings with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky in Budapest within weeks.
What flips the stakes from diplomatic theater to geopolitical flashpoint is the weapons question. Ukraine arrived in Washington this week pressing for long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles — weapons with a reported range of around 1,600 kilometers — that could threaten targets deep inside Russian-held territory.
“We expect that the momentum of curbing terror and war that succeeded in the Middle East will help to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” President Zelensky wrote on X as he arrived in the U.S., linking a recent Gaza ceasefire that President Trump helped broker to fresh hopes for progress in Europe.
But Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters, tempered that hope with a blunt logistical caveat. “We need them too,” he said of Tomahawks. “I don’t know what we can do about that.” The President also noted Mr. Putin was not enthusiastic about the idea — a sentiment echoed by a Russian aide who warned that supplying such missiles would not change the battlefield dynamic and could hurt prospects for a peaceful resolution.
What Ukrainians See
On the ground in Kyiv and in towns fractured by months of bombardment, the talk is practical and immediate. “When they hear about Tomahawks, Moscow rethinks,” President Zelensky told reporters. “They’re not negotiating out of generosity. They’re negotiating because their calculus changes.”
A Ukrainian emergency worker in a western city, speaking by phone, described how the prospect of long-range systems had altered the mood among commanders. “It’s not about bravado. It’s about leverage,” she said. “If they believe their supply lines are at risk, they act differently.”
Local Color: Budapest at the Crossroads
Walk along the Danube today and you can sense Hungary’s strange hosting role in miniature: an elderly man sells chimney cakes near the Parliament, tourists take photos of the shoes on the riverbank memorial — and behind the scaffolding, the government prepares for what could be an enormously consequential moment of hospitality.
“If leaders come here, we’ll welcome them,” said Ágnes Kovács, who runs a small café two streets from Kossuth Square. “But people worry. We have memories of 20th-century invasions. Diplomacy can bring hope, but also danger.”
That unease is mirrored in the politics of the day. Hosting a summit places Hungary under a microscope — its independence to choose matters balanced against the suspicion of being a conduit for Russian influence. For Orbán, the moment offers both leverage and peril: capture a stage for the West to see him as indispensable, or be criticized for abetting a meeting that might sideline Ukraine’s security concerns.
The Broader Picture: Diplomacy, Deterrence, and the Limits of Summitry
What does a summit actually buy? History teaches caution. Summits can thaw tensions, produce grand gestures, or merely paper over deeper structural conflicts. The Cold War offers examples of both breakthrough and charade. Today, the calculus includes modern variables: precision-guided weaponry, real-time intelligence, sanctions regimes, energy dependencies, and domestic political tides in capitals from Washington to Warsaw.
One Western security analyst, who asked not to be named, argued that the summit could work if three elements line up: credible deterrence on the battlefield, enforceable verification mechanisms, and a political will among all parties to restrain escalation. “Without those,” the analyst said, “a photo op becomes a false dawn.”
And yet, in an era when conventional diplomacy seems strained, there is hunger for a negotiated path. Millions remain displaced across Ukraine; cities have been reduced to rubble in the east; the war’s economic ripple effects continue to unsettle global markets. People everywhere are asking: can leaders, even imperfect ones, be nudged toward a settlement that stops the killing without rewarding aggression?
Questions to Hold as the World Watches
- Will the talks produce binding security guarantees, or will they be gestures of goodwill that dissipate in weeks?
- Can the West reconcile the need to avoid depleting its own defenses with the moral imperative to bolster Ukraine’s capacity to deter further aggression?
- What role should smaller states like Hungary play when they are both NATO members and politically aligned with Moscow?
Summits are shorthand for a longing that has moved across centuries: the hope that when the powerful sit in a room together, they will choose the slow, steady work of peace over the faster-burn calculus of profit and power. Whether a Budapest meeting will be that kind of turning point is not yet known. What is certain is that these are not abstract choices. They ripple through cafes, frontlines, and living rooms from Kyiv to Kansas City.
As diplomats arrange chairs and presidents count the political cost and gain, ordinary people ask themselves what peace really looks like. Is it an end to artillery on the horizon? Reparations? A new security architecture? Or merely enough quiet to rebuild and decide again about the future?
History will tell whether another summit in Budapest will tilt this chapter of Europe toward resolution or reprisal. For now, Budapest waits, the Danube flows on, and a weary continent holds its breath.
Prince Andrew renounces Duke of York title amid controversy
When a Name Becomes a Weight: The Quiet Erosion of a Royal Title
On a blustery afternoon in London, the golden face of Buckingham Palace looked less imperious than it has in decades. The Union flag hung at full mast, but the silence around the gates felt heavy — as if the palace itself were listening. In the months and years since the allegations first surfaced, a once-prominent royal presence has been shrinking like a photograph left too long in the sun.
Prince Andrew, the king’s younger brother and once a familiar figure in royal openings and naval commemorations, has announced that he will no longer use the remaining titles and honours attached to his public life. It is a step that carries both symbolic weight and practical limitations: he will keep the hereditary style of “prince” by birthright, and he will remain Duke of York by law unless Parliament acts — but in public and in print he will drop the name and the honours that have long been part of his identity.
A personal concession, a public consequence
The move follows years of probing headlines, a high-profile civil case that ended in a multi‑million dollar settlement, and a wider cultural reckoning about power, accountability and how institutions respond to allegations against their own. In a carefully worded statement released from royal channels, Andrew framed the decision as a family and national duty: to avoid being a distraction from the work of the monarch and the wider royal household.
“My focus has always been on duty — to family and to this country,” a palace statement paraphrased, “and in that spirit I am stepping back further so that the monarchy can carry on its work without dispute surrounding me causing disruption.”
That will mean, in practical terms, the relinquishing of visible honours: his knighthood within the Royal Victorian Order, his role within the Order of the Garter, and the public usage of the Duke of York styling. Yet the legal anatomy of the monarchy constrains some options. Titles bestowed by birth cannot be casually erased; an act of Parliament would be needed to remove them.
What’s been given up — and what cannot
For readers keeping tally, here’s what this development looks like in plain terms:
- Public styling: He will no longer appear in public or official contexts as “Duke of York” or use attached honors in formal settings.
- Honours: He is stepping away from the ceremonial knighthood and the Garter role that once cemented his status in the chivalric order.
- Hereditary status: He remains a prince and retains the dukedom in law unless Parliament takes the extraordinary step of revoking it.
Voices from the street and the palace
Outside the palace gates, reaction was a study in contrasts. A tourist from Madrid, eyes still wet from the rain and the grandeur, shrugged and said, “These things are bigger than one person. The family has to survive — they are the institution.” A shopkeeper in St James’s, who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years, was more cutting: “It’s about responsibility. Titles should mean something. If they don’t, what’s the point?”
Within the quietly buzzing corridors of constitutional experts and former courtiers, the move is being read as both damage control and an attempt at closure. “It’s a pragmatic step,” said a constitutional historian who asked not to be named. “It doesn’t erase the past, but it limits the monarchy’s exposure going into what many expect will be a period of intense scrutiny.”
Why symbolism matters
Symbols are not empty. For many Britons and people across the Commonwealth, honours and titles remain a tactile link to history, to ceremonies and public service. But when a symbol becomes a lightning rod for controversy, it can corrode faith in the institutions tied to it.
“People can understand mercy, or mistakes, but what they find harder to swallow is a lack of accountability,” said a sociologist who specializes in elites and public trust. “The monarchy depends on soft power — the affection and respect of the public. When that soft power drains, its authority is at risk.”
The larger currents: accountability, privilege, and modern monarchy
Andrew’s retreat is not merely a personal exit. It lands at the confluence of several global trends: growing demands for accountability from institutions once shielded by privilege, increased sensitivity to survivors’ voices in the era of #MeToo, and the evolution of monarchies toward narrower, more spokesperson-free roles.
Across Europe, royal houses have grappled with similar pressures — financial transparency, familial scandal, and the need to brand a monarchy as relevant and moral in an age of social media scrutiny. The British monarchy, still one of the most visible in the world, faces the additional complication of a global audience that judges not just performance at home but conduct that crosses borders.
“It’s about legitimacy,” said a media analyst. “Public goodwill is the monarchy’s currency. Every scandal chips away at it. The choice to stop using titles is a kind of triage — it slows the bleeding, if only a little.”
What comes next?
For now, the immediate fallout is administrative and reputational: orders will update their registers, biographies will be reworded, and royal itinerary pages will be edited. But deeper questions remain: should Parliament be asked to act on titles? Will public opinion demand further consequences? And perhaps most poignantly, what does this mean for survivors and for the public’s perception of justice?
“This is a signpost moment,” mused a human rights advocate. “It’s not closure, not by any stretch. But it does show that private settlements and public honours cannot comfortably coexist forever.”
Looking beyond the headline
As readers, what should we make of it? Consider the paradox of monuments and memory: we preserve the symbols we value, but we also must reckon with the behaviors of those who wear them. When does preserving an institution mean protecting its members, and when does it mean relinquishing them to preserve the institution’s integrity?
These choices are not simply British problems; they reverberate through every society balancing history, power and accountability. They invite us to ask: what does honor mean today? Does it come with unassailable privilege, or with bound duties and transparent consequences?
Last week, in a small café near the palace, a barista wiped down a counter and looked up. “People love a story where wrongs get fixed,” she said. “But life isn’t a neat book. It’s messy. Maybe this is a chapter closing. Maybe it’s just an interlude.”
For now, the palace will resume its quiet choreography of change. Time will tell whether this is an act of genuine reform or an elegant deflection. Either way, it’s a reminder: a name and a title can open doors, but they cannot fully shield a person — or an institution — from the court of public judgment.
What do you think this means for institutions tied to tradition? How much should historical honours bend to contemporary standards? Join the conversation — this is a story far from finished.
‘Everything turned to ash’: Gaza residents return to razed, smoldering homes
Back to Rubble: Walking Home in a City That Forgot How to Be a City
They come back on foot, or in the backs of battered pickups, or clinging to the hope that a ceasefire can be more than the pause between blasts. They arrive at dawn, when the light makes the ruined skyline look almost gentle — and then their eyes take in the truth: rooms gone, stairwells collapsed, whole apartment blocks reduced to neat piles of concrete like giant, broken sugar cubes.
“I have to walk a kilometre and a half… just to fill two water containers,” said Hossam Majed, 31, as he stood beside a mound of rebar and masonry where his living room used to be. He had managed to salvage a few bits — a table, a chair, and a much-prized water tank — and with those he had begun the ritual of making a life out of what remained.
This is the northwest of Gaza City, Sabra neighborhood and its surroundings: empty streets lined with the detritus of ordinary lives. You can still see a child’s shoe catching the wind on a twisted piece of metal. A Palestinian flag flutters from a pole near a makeshift tent. The cadence of daily survival — water, food, warmth, safeguarding what’s left from looters — plays on repeat.
Faces of Return
Umm Rami Lubbad is one of those who fled south to Khan Younis as the fighting intensified, hoping to wait out the worst. She returned with a small fleet of hopes: a mother’s wish for stability, the idea that their home could be a refuge again. Instead she found a horizon of rubble.
“My heart nearly stopped when I saw the house reduced to rubble,” she told me, her voice quiet with a kind of exhausted disbelief. “I was looking as far as my eyes could see — and saw nothing.”
Her family sleeps on the street most nights. “We sleep in the street regardless. I don’t have a tent,” she said. When shelling made being outside simply impossible, neighbors took them in. They gather wood for cooking, a gas canister for warmth, and try—half-joking, half-pleading—to fashion sanitation out of scraps.
Ahmad al-Abbasi hoped for a more hopeful return. He had left the city when the onslaught began and came back expecting familiar doorways. “We came back north hoping to find our homes and rebuild our lives. As you can see… Gaza has turned into a ghost town,” he said, gesturing to the five-storey skeleton that once was his building. He had anchored sheets with cinder blocks and iron rods, draping a sheet to make a single room in the open air.
“We’ll try to fix even just one room or one tent to shelter ourselves, our children, and our families,” he added, adjusting the fabric that flapped loudly in the wind like a weary flag.
Daily Life: The Arithmetic of Shortage
Electricity is a rumor. Internet is intermittent. Food and basic goods — where available at all — cost more in the north because fewer suppliers make the journey and risk the crossing. “Even food is more expensive than in the south because it’s scarce,” Hossam said, tallying the new, harsher budget of survival.
Water journeys are a test of endurance. Clean drinking water, the most elemental human commodity, has become the object of a daily pilgrimage. Lines form at communal taps and distribution points; people queue with bottles and jerrycans, bargaining over an invisible currency: time. Without fuel, generators sit silent. Hospitals operate on the edge of feasibility. Clinics are overwhelmed. The very infrastructure that supported life begins to erode.
When Health Systems Are Hollowed Out
The World Health Organization has been blunt: infectious diseases are “spiralling out of control” in Gaza. Of the territory’s 36 hospitals, only 13 are even partially functioning, and in Gaza City — the urban heart of the strip — the WHO counts eight partially functioning health facilities. Staff shortages, depleted supplies, and the trauma of two years of conflict have left survivors trapped between injury and absence of care.
Hanan Balkhy, regional director for WHO, framed the scale of the crisis in stark terms: “Whether meningitis… diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work.” She warned that the challenge is not simply to repair, but often to rebuild — a job that will require billions of dollars and likely decades of effort.
The human toll is staggering. According to Gaza’s health ministry — figures reported by local authorities and considered reliable by international bodies — nearly 68,000 people have been killed since October 7, 2023, when Hamas’s attack on Israel sparked the current conflict. The United Nations reports that more than 800 attacks have hit health facilities since then. Almost 42,000 people are living with life-changing injuries, and a quarter of them are children.
Mental health needs have surged as well. The WHO estimates that over one million people in Gaza require urgent psychosocial support after enduring years of bombardment and displacement; services are stretched beyond breaking. “There are children who have received zero doses of routine immunisation in the last two years,” Balkhy said, underscoring the long tail of crises — from vulnerability to outbreaks to lost futures.
What Comes Next?
The ceasefire has created a fragile space in which aid might move more freely. International leaders and humanitarian agencies have called for corridors for fuel, medical evacuations, and large-scale shipments of food and medicine. But for families on the ground, the immediate calculus is brutally simple: Where will we sleep tonight? How do we keep our children fed? Who will mend the shattered roof?
An aid worker I spoke with, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said, “If we can get fuel, people can begin to run pumps, sterilize water, and power operating theatres. Without fuel, the whole system remains on its knees.”
Rebuilding will not be only about concrete and cranes. It will require political will, coordination across borders, and an honest accounting of what decades of neglect and two years of warfare have done to institutions and people alike. It will also require asking difficult questions about displacement, return, and how to rebuild communities, not just buildings.
Why This Should Matter to You
When a city is reduced to rubble, it is not just homes that crumble: schools, clinics, markets, stories. The consequences radiate outward — to neighboring regions, to economies, to the next generation. The echoes of this crisis will influence migration, health security, and geopolitical stability across the broader region.
What do we owe the families who carry a water tank across a torn street? What does a single flag, pinned to a makeshift tent, ask of the rest of the world? If you believe in basic human dignity, the images of Gaza’s rubble demand a response: not just sympathy, but the political and practical will to move aid, to protect civilians, and to invest in long-term reconstruction that centers people, not just infrastructure.
For now, people like Hossam, Umm Rami, Ahmad, and Mustafa remain on the edge — returning, sifting, salvaging, and imagining a future that feels unbearably distant. They ask for tents, water, fuel, doctors, and a space to grieve and to begin again. They ask, quietly and insistently, to be allowed to live with dignity.
EU Unveils 2030 Roadmap to Strengthen Defence Readiness
A Continent on Guard: Europe’s Plan to Build a Shield by 2030
There is a new kind of drumbeat across European capitals—not the stomping cadence of tanks, but the quick, relentless hum of rotors and the faint, uncanny whisper of algorithms. In Brussels last week, the European Commission unveiled a road map that seeks to transform that hum into something Europe can see, track and, if necessary, stop.
At the heart of the plan is a simple but urgent premise: modern conflict is noisy, messy and often invisible. Sabotage at sea, incursions by drones, tests of undersea cables, and fleeting violations of airspace no longer belong only to thriller novels or Cold War archives. They are present-tense challenges that demand a new kind of preparedness—technical, political and psychological.
What the Commission is Proposing
The Commission’s blueprint, born from recommendations at the EU leaders’ June summit, lays out four flagship projects: counter-drone systems, bolstering the eastern borders, enhanced air-defence, and what officials are calling a European Space Shield.
These initiatives aim to move member states from ad hoc responses to collective readiness by 2030—so that governments can “anticipate, prepare for, and respond to any crisis, including high-intensity conflict,” as the road map puts it.
Capabilities on the Shortlist
Whenever Europe talks about defence these days, the list of needs reads like a technology catalogue for an uncertain future:
- Air and missile defence
- Artillery and ammunition stockpiles
- Military mobility across borders
- Cybersecurity and electronic warfare
- Artificial intelligence for decision support
- Drones and counter-drone systems
- Maritime and ground combat capabilities
And the Commission is explicit: the pathway to faster, cheaper scaling is joint procurement and a harmonised European defence market. The goal is not just to buy more, but to cultivate an industrial base that can supply “at speed and volume.”
Why Now? The Shadow of Hybrid Warfare
For years analysts have warned of hybrid tactics that blur the line between peace and war. These are the acts that aim to destabilise democracies without necessarily drawing the red lines of traditional armed conflict. Think of clandestine sabotage, targeted cyber-attacks, and small, cheap drones that slip across borders to gather intelligence—and sometimes, to strike.
“We are witnessing a battlefield that feels almost domestic,” said Sofia Martinez, an EU defence analyst. “It’s not always created by armies. It’s orchestrated through technologies and tactics that exploit openness—our markets, our networks, even our waterways.”
One poignant example: fishermen in Baltic ports watch with a new kind of suspicion as unmanned aerial devices ripple the low clouds above their boats. “We used to worry about storms and nets,” said Jānis, a 47-year-old fisherman from a small Latvian quay. “Now I worry if what I’m seeing is a hobby drone or something meant to look for us.”
Eastern Flank Watch: Ditches, Drones and Deterrence
One of the more evocative elements of the plan is what officials call the Eastern Flank Watch. Picture two complementary lines of defence.
The first is the old-fashioned “ground wall”: anti-tank trenches, dragon’s teeth, reconstructed wetlands—hard infrastructure intended to slow an advance and complicate military manoeuvres. It sounds like history, but with a present-day twist.
The second is a “drone wall”: a network of acoustic and radar sensors, electronic warfare nodes, and interceptor systems designed to detect and disable drones before they become a threat. Latvia has begun building this very architecture, stitching acoustic sensors into a net that can hear and localise small unmanned craft.
“Detection is phase one,” said Andrius Kubilius, the EU’s defence commissioner. “Destruction in a cost-effective way—anti-drone interceptors, electronic warfare tools—is phase two. If we do one without the other, we leave ourselves exposed.”
From Dublin to Tallinn: A Patchwork Becoming a Quilt
This is also a story of geography and politics. Ireland—traditionally neutral and not a NATO member—announced support for the EU’s SAFE initiative in June. Dublin said it would use participation to acquire artillery, cyber-capabilities, and air-defence systems, while protecting maritime and critical infrastructure.
“Support does not mean surrender,” said an Irish defence official who asked not to be named. “We’re not ceding national decisions on procurement, but we recognise the security fabric must be woven together if everyone is to be safer.”
Small countries such as the Netherlands and Latvia are already coalescing around practical cooperation: a new “Drones Coalition” has started meeting. The objective is pragmatic—make anti-drone systems fully operational by the end of 2027 and do so in close coordination with NATO partners.
Industrial Strategy Meets Security
Beyond sensors and trenches, this road map is about industry—the factories and supply chains that can turn designs into delivered capabilities. The Commission has proposed tracking industrial capacity for air and missile defence, drones, and space systems so Europe knows whether it can scale production when crisis demands it.
“A simplified, integrated European defence equipment market is key,” an EU industrial official explained. “We need harmonised rules so companies can ramp up production across borders.”
The Human Angle: People Who Will Live with the Shield
In border towns, farmers and shopkeepers watch road convoys of military vehicles with a mix of unease and resignation. In military academies, cadets study a new curriculum that blends cyber tradecraft with old lessons on discipline and logistics. In coastal villages, a shipyard worker named Aoife explains the practical upside: “If there’s a shared order for parts, we get work. If we have contracts spanning five countries, my yard stays busy.”
But there are also questions of democracy and costs. Who decides what to buy? Which countries lead on procurement? How transparent will the harmonised market be? These are not small queries in a union that prized subsidiarity and national sovereignty for decades.
What This Means for You
Some readers will feel reassured by a European Union that is taking threats seriously and investing in collective defence. Others will worry about the militarisation of diplomacy and the risks of an arms race. But there’s another layer: resilience. Investing in cyber-defences, secure communications and hardened ports is about keeping economies moving and societies open when tensions rise.
Ask yourself: what would you want your hometown to have—the ability to spot a threat early, or the illusion of safety until it is too late? Where should the line be drawn between preparedness and provocation?
Europe’s road map is not a blueprinted war plan. It is, instead, an attempt to stitch together capabilities across 27 nations, to turn fragments of readiness into a shared architecture of deterrence and defence. The clock ticks toward 2030. The question is whether ambition, politics and industry can align in time to meet the threats that already whisper at the edges of the continent.
Final Thought
In the end, defence is more than hardware. It is the sum of political will, shared values and the patience to build systems that last. As cities hum and drones continue to multiply, Europe is deciding what kind of guardian it wants to be—a patchwork of national efforts or a cohesive shield. The answer will define not only military postures, but the future shape of European cooperation itself.
Guddoomiyaha Midowga Afrika oo kulan la yeeshay Golaha Ammaanka ee Qaramada Midoobay
Nov 17(Jowhar)-Guddoomiyaha Midowga Afrika, Maxamuud Cali Yuusuf, ayaa maanta xarunta Midowga Afrika ee magaalada Addis Ababa kulan muhiim ah kula yeeshay wafdi ka socda Golaha Ammaanka ee Qaramada Midoobay.
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