Feb 17(Jowhar)- Madaxweynaha Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya Mudane Xasan Sheekh Maxamuud ayaa kulan qado ah maanta ku maamuusay xubnaha Madasha Mustaqbalka ee ajiibay gogoshii Xukuumaddu ay u fidaysay 19 bishii Jannaayo 2026.
Abiye oo Erdogan kala hadlay Badda ay Itoobiya u baahan tahay
Feb 17(Jowhar)-Ra’iisul wasaaraha Itoobiya Abiy Axmed oo ka garab hadlayay madaxweynaha Turkiga Rejeb Dayib Erdogan oo jooga Addis Ababa ayaa sheegay in ay si xoogan uga hadleen arrimaha marinka Badda ee ay Itoobiya u baahan tahay.
Jackson: Civil Rights Advocate Who Worked to Bridge Divides
A Giant Who Spoke to the Whole Room: Remembering Jesse Jackson
The news landed like a hush mid-sermon: Jesse Jackson, the thunderous, gentling, complicated voice of American civil rights for more than half a century, has died at 84. For people who grew up under segregated signs and for those who came of age with tweets and streaming, Jackson was a bridge — not a sanitized relic, but a restless, searching presence who refused to let pain be private or progress be tidy.
“He was our door-opener,” said Marisol Vega, a community organizer who grew up attending Rainbow PUSH meetings on Chicago’s South Side. “Not perfect. Not always easy to love. But he made space for people who otherwise would have been invisible.” Her words echo a family statement that called him “a servant leader” to the oppressed and overlooked — a fitting epitaph for a man who made diplomacy, oratory and relentless agitation his craft.
From Jim Crow to the National Stage
Jackson’s story began in Greenville, South Carolina, born on October 8, 1941, into a region stitched tightly with the laws and habits of Jim Crow. The early years — a teenage mother, the adopted surname, a football scholarship and then a transfer to a historically Black college after encountering discrimination — are the kind of details that explain more than any policy analysis how a life of conscience takes root.
He moved north and into the orbit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., preaching, organizing, and learning to make large rooms feel intimate. On the day King was assassinated in Memphis, Jackson was in the hotel below; his later recounting of having held King in his arms became one of the many tensions that marked his life: deeply loyal to the movement that made him, yet a figure willing to pull the movement in new directions when he thought it needed course corrections.
Chicago: Laboratory and Battleground
Chicago, with its layered neighborhoods and political machines, became Jackson’s operating theater. He founded Operation PUSH and later the National Rainbow Coalition, which merged into Rainbow/PUSH in 1996. The organizations were black-led, coalition-minded, and stubbornly focused on economic empowerment — job training, corporate accountability and pressure campaigns that mixed faith and force.
“You could walk into one of his meetings and feel the argument in the air — not only about race, but about bread-and-butter stuff,” said David King, a former PUSH volunteer. “We were trying to get people into jobs, into homes, into the conversation of power. He believed dignity had an economic angle.”
The Orator Who Ran for President
Jackson translated sermon cadence into political momentum in two presidential bids that shook the Democratic Party. In 1984 he captured roughly 3.3 million votes — about 18% of the primary electorate — finishing a surprising third. Four years later he sharpened his message and broadened his reach, winning 11 state contests in 1988 and some 6.8 million votes, or about 29%.
Those campaigns were moments of possibility and blunt reminder. Jackson’s politics pushed issues of race, poverty and foreign policy onto the national stage, yet controversies — most notably inflammatory remarks about Jewish communities and New York that cost him critical allies — also revealed the peril of mixing raw, unfiltered candor with the new scrutiny of mass media.
“He didn’t dress his frustrations in velvet,” a longtime Democratic strategist observed. “Sometimes that was a strength — people heard their anger in him. Other times, it was a liability.”
Global Hustler: Prisoner Releases and Quiet Diplomacy
Jackson’s reach was not confined to American shores. He negotiated releases in places like Syria, Cuba, Iraq and Serbia, sometimes bringing home Americans who had become pawns of geopolitics. His role as a special envoy to Africa under President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and his meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1990 to help free hostages are the kind of episodes that make him read like a Cold War diplomat with a pastor’s moral thrust.
“He walked into rooms others wouldn’t,” said a former State Department official. “People thought of him as a moral broker. And often, he was effective.” It is true: Reagan thanked him when he secured the release of a U.S. naval aviator from Syria in 1984, and Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, recognizing a lifetime that had mixed chapel pulpit and political theater.
Controversy, Complexity, and Craft
Jackson’s life was neither untarnished saintliness nor disposable scandal. He confronted allegations — a son’s political fall from grace, personal lapses in judgment, inexplicable slips of rhetoric — that complicated the public’s love affair with him. Still, he remained a towering public presence, not because he was flawless, but because he kept trying.
He also wielded media savvy: a CNN show in the 1990s, relentless appearances, and an ability to frame a grievance as a national conversation. Yet those same qualities attracted critique: why did a movement leader spend so much time in the spotlight? Why were internal disputes so public? The answers live in the paradox of modern activism: exposure can amplify a cause, but it can also magnify human error.
Numbers That Mattered
- 1984 Democratic primaries: ~3.3 million votes (about 18%)
- 1988 Democratic primaries: ~6.8 million votes (about 29%), including wins in 11 states
- Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017; remained publicly engaged afterward
- Founded Operation PUSH in the early 1970s; National Rainbow Coalition in 1984; merged to form Rainbow/PUSH in 1996
Legacy: What Jesse Jackson Leaves Behind
What do you inherit from a life that tries to bend institutions? For many, it is a vocabulary — phrases that teach people to ask for more. For others, it is the lines of power re-drawn: Black candidates tested the primaries because Jackson had shown it could be done. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential success did not erase Jackson’s role; it built on a path that men and women before him had scouted.
“He gave ordinary people a permission slip to demand extraordinary things,” said Aisha Thompson, a young activist in Detroit who cites Rainbow/PUSH as formative for her organizing. “He taught us to call the president, to meet the CEO, to show up in numbers and in love.”
At the same time, Jackson’s story raises broader questions about movements and memory. How do we evaluate leaders who are fierce advocates and flawed humans? How does the public square handle concession and criticism? In an era of instantaneous judgment, what does forgiveness look like — and who gets it?
Final Reflections
In neighborhoods from Greenville to Chicago to Selma, elder church members will tell stories tonight: about a sermon that shifted a life, an office that helped a family, a call that coaxed a hostage home. Young people will stand at marches and ask how to harness moral force in an age when hashtags can make a moment but not always a movement.
Jesse Jackson’s life resists easy summarization. He was orator and organizer, error-prone and brave, a broker of compassion who also courted controversy. Above all, he insisted that public life was worth inhabiting for those the public too often forgets.
So ask yourself: when you see someone pushed to the margins, do you look away — or do you become, for a moment, a servant leader too? That question feels like the clearest inherence of a man who spent his life making noise until the nation listened.
Zelensky: Diplomacy Achieves More When Backed by Justice and Strength
Geneva’s uneasy calm: diplomacy, winter, and a war that refuses to warm
Geneva in winter is a peculiar kind of serenity: the lake mirrors the Alps like a polished plate, the streets smell faintly of roasting chestnuts and diesel, and the city’s famously neutral hotels hum with hushed negotiations. On this particular morning, a low-slung jet cut through that quiet and parked at the airport, its passengers stepping into a conference loop that has defined, in fits and starts, Europe’s most dangerous dispute in a generation.
Trilateral talks between Ukrainian, Russian and US delegations were due to begin here, and the mood was a blend of brittle hope and weary realism. “Diplomacy works only when it is backed by justice and by strength,” a Ukrainian spokesperson told me—his eyes tired, his hands steady—summarizing a sentiment that has become a mantra in Kyiv. “You can’t bargain with impunity.”
What’s on the table — and what’s not
The items being ferried between the negotiators are not just maps and memoranda; they are lived realities: cities hollowed by shelling, families who no longer recognize their neighborhoods, grids that fail when thermometers plunge below -20°C. Russia seeks a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from swathes of the Donetsk region; Kyiv rejects any unilateral pullback without ironclad guarantees that a ceasefire will not be a prelude to renewed offensives.
Behind each point on the agenda lies a brutal arithmetic. Russian forces currently hold roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory—an area that includes Crimea, annexed in 2014, and other pockets captured in the years since 2022. Outside observers estimate that the conflict has produced tens of thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military casualties across both sides. The exact toll is contested, but the human scale is undeniable: whole towns reduced to outlines, whole families reduced to lists of names.
Key sticking points
- Territorial withdrawal: Moscow has demanded concessions Kyiv calls tantamount to surrender.
- Security guarantees: Kyiv insists any ceasefire must include western-backed protections against a renewed invasion.
- Sanctions and pressure: Ukraine and its partners argue that economic penalties remain one of the few levers to deter further escalation.
“You can’t paper over occupation with promises,” said Olena, a schoolteacher from Sumy who now volunteers in a bombed-out shelter. “If there are no guarantees, why would anyone believe them? We gave up land before—what stops them from taking more?”
Energy as theatre: winter, blackouts, and strategic strikes
The rhetoric at the table is matched by action on the ground. Recent Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have produced what Kyiv calls the worst energy crisis of the war: hundreds of thousands of homes plunged into cold and dark as temperatures dipped toward -20°C. Hospitals have run on generators, schools have consolidated classes into warmer rooms, and neighbors have become each other’s heaters—sharing hot tea, hot food, and something like hope.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has used drones to strike at elements of Russia’s oil and gas sector—targeted blows designed to choke funding streams that analysts say help sustain Moscow’s military effort. “These are not acts of vengeance,” said an independent energy analyst in Europe. “They’re tactical attempts to alter the calculus—if you can make it more costly to wage war, you change incentives.”
Numbers that matter
- Territory occupied by Russia: roughly 20% of Ukraine’s land area (including Crimea).
- Estimated human cost: tens of thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of military casualties (estimates vary; counting remains contested).
- Households affected by energy outages: hundreds of thousands during peak bellicose strikes, with numbers rising in harsh weather.
Voices from the front and the homefront
In a recreation centre-turned-shelter near Dnipro, a woman named Kateryna held a thermos of tea as if it were an heirloom. “We stitch our children into warm clothes at night,” she said, looking at a photograph of a grandson whose face was still a memory on a cracked wall. “We joke, because if you stop joking you will only cry.”
At Geneva’s Palais des Nations, a Russian delegate—formal, clipped—told reporters: “Negotiations are a path. We are committed to discussing practical steps.” An American mediator, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that “the room is small and every concession is heavy.”
“It’s winter in the north and war in the south,” said Mikhail, an academic who has watched peace talks for decades. “Geneva is a sensible place to talk, not because it magically makes agreements, but because its neutrality forces hard conversations.”
Beyond the table: why this matters to a global audience
If you live in a country far from Kyiv or Donetsk, you might ask: why should this particular negotiation keep you awake? Because wars don’t stay confined to borders. They reshape energy markets, reroute grain ships, fuel refugee flows, and test the resilience of international law. They also pose a philosophical question: when does the price of peace become a price of surrender?
Consider the supply chain disruptions that ripple into supermarket aisles from Europe to Africa; consider the spike in energy prices that can push households in distant countries into precarity. Consider, too, the precedent set when a powerful state is allowed, or not allowed, to secure gains by force.
Questions for the reader
- What is the threshold between pragmatic compromise and moral capitulation?
- How should democratic societies balance the urgency of peace with the demands of justice?
- What role should neutral forums—cities like Geneva—play in resolving conflicts in an age of polarized global politics?
What to watch next
Diplomacy is often slow; it is also fragile. Expect days of terse communiqués, phased agreements that test trust, and shadow talks where the real bargaining happens. Watch for three signals that would indicate progress: clear, independently verifiable security guarantees; a workable framework for phased withdrawal that protects civilians; and a credible enforcement mechanism that discourages future aggression.
“We will not trade our dignity for a headline,” said an adviser to Kyiv, a phrase that lingered in the corridors after a long session. “But there are ways to end a war that preserve honor and prevent future bloodshed.”
Closing thoughts
Geneva will give us theatre and perhaps traction. But peace is not delivered in conference rooms alone; it is stitched, slowly, into the fabric of daily life—repaired power lines, reopened schools, reconciled communities. For now, the world watches a careful dance of demands and concessions beneath the Alps, while in Ukraine people clutch hot mugs and each other against the cold.
How would you balance justice and peace if you were holding the pen that signs ceasefire terms? The answer may be different for every reader, but the question—urgent, human, necessary—stays the same.
Jesse Jackson, U.S. Civil Rights Trailblazer, Passes Away at 84
A Giant Has Passed: Remembering Reverend Jesse Jackson
There are mornings when a city wakes to a familiar sound—the clatter of buses, the hum of a bakery, a radio voice that has become part of the domestic furniture. This morning Chicago woke differently. Word moved through neighborhoods like a ripple: Reverend Jesse Jackson had died, age 84, surrounded by his family. The short family statement—stark, tender—called him a “servant leader” who “elevated the voices of the voiceless.” For many, that was simply true; for others, the man was a complex, sometimes controversial fixture of American life. All of it mattered.
“He shared himself with the world and the world became our family,” his wife Jacqueline and their children wrote. “Honor his memory by continuing the fight for the values he lived by.” Those words hang over Jackson’s life like a banner—an invitation, a demand, a benediction.
From Jim Crow South to Chicago Pulpits
Jesse Louis Jackson was born on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina, into a world that the Jim Crow laws had mapped in sharp, unforgiving lines. His mother was 16; his father, 33 and living next door. He was adopted by his mother’s later husband, and his early life was stitched with the small humiliations and big dangers of being Black in the segregated South.
There is a childhood picture that explains something of the man: a lanky teenager, a football scholarship that would open one door and close another, walking past a “Whites Only” sign toward activism. At North Carolina A&T, at the University of Illinois briefly, at Chicago Theological Seminary where he was ordained in 1968, Jackson learned to make moral conviction sing. He was arrested attempting to enter a whites-only public library in South Carolina and, in doing so, joined a long catalogue of personal risks civil rights leaders took to change a nation’s habits.
The Drummer in King’s Band
Jackson was more than a foot soldier; he became a lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., often traveling with him, learning the pulse of protest and the grammar of moral argument. He was on the floor below King at the Lorraine Motel on the day King was assassinated in 1968—an image that has haunted Jackson’s public life ever since. He later claimed to have cradled King and been the last to hear his words. Others disputed that account. The moment crystallizes the messy intimacy of movements: grief, myth, memory, tangle together.
Organizing, Oratory, and the Rise to National Prominence
Chicago became Jackson’s chosen ground. He turned a local pulpit into a national platform—founding Operation PUSH in the early 1970s, later the National Rainbow Coalition in 1984, and finally merging those efforts into the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in 1996. Through those organizations he pushed corporations, politicians and the public to reckon with inequality—not just racial but economic and gendered, and later LGBTQ rights as well.
He had a voice that could both soothe and sting. In the 1980s his oratory drew crowds and headlines. His presidential campaigns—1984 and 1988—were more than vanity quests. In 1984 he won roughly 3.3 million votes in Democratic nominating contests (about 18% of those cast), a surprising figure that announced Black political power on a new scale. In 1988 he was more polished, more prepared: he won 11 primaries and caucuses and amassed nearly 6.8 million votes—about 29% in the nominating contests—pushing the Democratic Party to listen, to reconsider its base, its language, its future.
“America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one colour, one cloth,” he told delegates at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. “Hold your head high, stick your chest out… Don’t you surrender.” That kind of line—simple, biblical, electrifying—made him a bridge to the people who needed a bridge and a lightning rod for those who feared change.
Personal Diplomacy on the Global Stage
Jackson’s activism was not confined to speeches and ballot boxes. He became, remarkably, an unofficial diplomat. He negotiated the release of prisoners from Syria, Cuba, Serbia and Iraq. In 1984 he secured the freedom of U.S. naval aviator Robert Goodman Jr. from Syria; in the early 1990s he met Saddam Hussein to press for the release of hostages after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. These missions earned him invitations to the White House and a reputation as someone who could move across borders where governments could not—or would not—act.
“He did what governments sometimes could not do: he humanized bargaining,” said a longtime colleague. “He put a face to a negotiation.”
Triumphs, Controversies, and Human Frailty
To call Jackson’s life a straight narrative of triumph would be to flatten it. He weathered controversies: crude remarks that cost political momentum in 1984; personal scandals that troubled his movement; the ignominious fall of his son Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned from Congress and later served time after a fraud conviction. Leaders, like humans, are not monoliths. They are public and private, heroic and flawed.
Still, awards arrived. President Bill Clinton gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. He hosted a weekly CNN show from 1992 to 2000. He continued to lean into public life well into old age—speaking out against police killings in 2020 and reminding the nation that a guilty verdict in the murder of George Floyd might be relief, “but not a time for celebration.”
Later Years: Parkinson’s and Passing the Torch
In 2017, at 76, Jackson announced a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis after years of symptoms. Globally, an estimated 10 million people live with Parkinson’s, according to WHO figures, and his disclosure humanized a common-but-misunderstood ailment. He stepped down as president of Rainbow/PUSH in 2023 after more than five decades in leadership, leaving a movement to a new generation.
“He asked us to keep going,” said a young organizer in South Side Chicago. “He told us to keep our feet on the ground and our eyes on the prize.”
What He Leaves Behind
When leaders die, we tend to tally achievements and transgressions like ledger entries. Jackson’s ledger is long: millions registered to vote, millions more inspired to run for office, civil rights organizations that persisted for decades, the kind of rhetorical fire that could raise a crowd and sometimes raise tempers. He never held elected office, yet he bent the arc of politics around him.
His life forces questions: How do movements sustain themselves when their charismatic architects age and fall ill? How do societies distinguish between the public utility of a life and the personal mistakes that accompany it? How do we honor the gains made while honestly appraising the harms?
If you have ever felt excluded by a system, Jackson’s voice—flinty and consoling—reminds you that exclusion is not inevitable. If you have ever wondered whether a single voice can alter a conversation, Jackson’s life argues yes. He made bridges where bridges were scarce; he made noise where silence prevailed.
Close the Loop: A Call
There will be memorials and eulogies and heated reassessments. There will also be the quieter things: community meetings, voter registration drives, a young organizer quoting “Don’t you surrender” into a cellphone camera. That, perhaps, would be the truest honor.
So what will you do with the inheritance of Jesse Jackson’s years? Will you register a neighbor to vote, speak up at a PTA, lobby that councilperson, mentor a teenager? He would ask you to act—not for the cameras, not for the plaques, but to narrow the gap between promise and practice.
“He gave us faith that faith will not disappoint,” a friend said. “Now, we have to finish the work.”
Madaxweynaha Turkiga Erdogan oo maanta ku wajahan dalka Itoobiya
Feb 17(Jowhar)-Madaxweynaha Turkiga Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ayaa maanta u safri doona caasimadda Itoobiya ee Addis Ababa, halkaas oo uu kula kulmi doono Ra’iisul Wasaaraha Itoobiya Abiy Ahmed si ay uga wada hadlaan xiriirka labada dal iyo horumarka ka jira Geeska Afrika.
At least 14 killed in Pakistan amid surge of violent attacks
Smoke Over the Frontier: A Night of Explosions, Loss, and Questions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
The night came in like a thief—quiet at first, the sky a cold blue over the ridged silhouette of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—and then it exploded with a violence the region has learned, over decades, to fear.
In the tribal district of Bajaur and the town of Bannu, two bombs and a pitched gunfight left a stunned community counting bodies and tending the wounded. At least 11 security personnel and three civilians, including a child, were killed; 25 more were injured. Residents rushed to hospitals and mosques, where plastic sheeting and blood-streaked clothing mixed with the heady smell of rotting tea and incense—everyday life for a place that has had to learn how to grieve in public.
What happened
In Bajaur, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into the boundary wall of a seminary late in the evening, security sources told me. Eight policemen and Frontier Corps personnel inside the religious college were killed on impact; roofs on nearby houses collapsed from the blast, and a child was among those killed.
“We could hear the walls shake,” said Hamid Gul, a neighbor who rushed to the scene. “When I ran in, there were books, shoes, and blood everywhere. A boy—maybe ten—was under the rubble. We tried to lift the stone ourselves.”
In Bannu, a device hidden in a rickshaw detonated near Miryan police station, killing two civilians and wounding 17. The third scene unfolded in Shangla district, where a search operation turned into a firefight; three policemen and three militants were killed. The provincial police said those militants were involved in targeting Chinese nationals.
Faces, names, and the human calculus
Names are still being confirmed; funerals are being arranged amidst curfews and checkpoints. The dead are not just tallies on a security brief—each loss is a thread in a family tapestry suddenly unraveled.
“He was my only son,” said Mariam Khan, a widow whose husband served in the Frontier Corps. “He sent me a photograph this morning. He said, ‘Don’t worry, Amma, the day is long and I will come home.’ I laugh and cry in the same hour.”
Across the hospital wards, doctors and nurses—overworked and under-resourced—worked by flashlight and the glow of mobile phones. The corridor was thick with the sounds of relatives calling out names, the metallic clatter of stretchers, the crackle of two-way radios coordinating to move the wounded to bigger facilities.
Why Chinese nationals are a target
Over the past decade, Chinese investment—most visibly through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)—has reshaped Pakistan’s infrastructure and its geopolitical alliances. Tens of billions of dollars in roads, power plants, and ports have flowed into the country. But wealth and security are rarely distributed evenly, and resentment can fester where jobs are scarce, where land is disputed, or where people feel sidelined.
“Attacks on Chinese workers are both symbolic and strategic,” said Dr. Sara Qureshi, a security analyst in Islamabad. “They send a message to Beijing about the limits of protection and to local governments about contested governance. Militants want to undermine the economic base that bolsters the state.”
In March last year, five Chinese nationals working on a dam project were killed when a suicide attacker targeted their vehicle on the Karakoram Highway. That incident remains seared into the public memory of communities along the northern routes—an illustration of how fragile security can be when strategic projects run through rugged and restive terrain.
Numbers that matter
- At least 14 people were killed across three incidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
- At least 25 people were wounded.
- Earlier this month, a suicide blast at a Shiite mosque in Islamabad killed 31 people and wounded 169—claimed by the Islamic State group.
- Chinese investment in Pakistan through CPEC has amounted to tens of billions of dollars in projects; protection of personnel remains a central security priority.
Beyond the headlines: lives and landscapes
If you drive the winding roads from Peshawar toward the northern districts, the landscape changes like a film strip—the noise of trucks gives way to goats on the road, the tar turns to gravel, and then the jagged teeth of the mountains rise like a challenge. Small bazaars cluster where the roads narrow: tea stalls with chipped teacups, men hunched over chessboards, shopkeepers keeping one eye on their phones, another on the road that feeds their livelihood.
“We have learned to live with fear,” said Latif Ahmed, a tea vendor in Bannu. “But we will not leave. This is our home; we have nowhere else to go. The children have to go to school, the wheat must be sowed, the taxes paid.”
The wider context
Pakistan’s struggle with militant violence is not a single story but many: sectarian conflicts, insurgencies seeking to carve out power in neglected regions, and the overlapping shadow of groups like ISIS seeking to exploit fractures. The fall of Kabul in 2021 and the shifting dynamics in Afghanistan changed cross-border security calculations, even if direct causal links are complex and contested.
Analysts warn that failing to protect civilian life and critical infrastructure could deepen local grievances and provide fertile ground for recruitment—or push investments elsewhere. “Security is not merely about boots on the ground,” Dr. Qureshi adds. “It’s about governance, economic inclusion, and credible, accountable institutions.”
What now? Questions for policy and for readers
Who bears responsibility when a school, a seminary, or a mosque turns into a target? How do governments balance the urgent need to protect foreign investment and diplomats with the equally urgent need to protect their own citizens? And for ordinary people—shopkeepers, mothers, young students—how do they stitch together a life in the shadow of periodic explosions?
“We will demand justice,” said a local councilor, Rashid Khan. “But justice must not be more blood. We need jobs, schools, and a sense that the state is present—not just in the form of walls and checkpoints, but in hospitals that work, teachers who come, and courts that function.”
That plea is more than local politics. It speaks to a global theme: as money moves across borders and strategic interests override local concerns, there is often a human cost that can be easy to ignore from afar. The trauma of a night like this—of names read out at dawn and children asking where their fathers are—reverberates through families and communities for generations.
A call to witness
As you read this from wherever you are—a city apartment, a rural garden, a crowded newsroom—consider how we measure security and progress. Is the true index the length of a motorway or the number of funerals avoided?
“We need more than words,” Mariam said, folding her hands over a photograph. “We need people to come and understand, to care enough to change things.”
For now, Bajaur and Bannu will bury their dead, bandage their wounds, and light candles. The morning after the blast, a young man swept the steps of a mosque, his face still smudged with soot, and began the slow work of repair. It is an act of defiance; of ordinary courage.
Will policy change fast enough to stop the next act of violence? Only time—and the choices of many—will tell. For the families who lost loved ones last night, time has already become an unhealing wound. For the rest of us, there is a choice: to watch and forget, or to look closer and demand better.
Madaxweyne Xasan iyo Golaha Mustaqbalka oo maanta kulan ku leh magaalada Muqdisho
Feb 17(Jowhar)-Wararka naga soo gaaraya magaalada Muqdisho ayaa ku warramaya inuu jiro kulan weyn oo u dhexeeya madaxweyne Xasan iyo Golaha Mustaqbalka, kaasoo aad isha loogi wada hayo.
Godfather legend Robert Duvall passes away at 95
Robert Duvall: A Quiet Giant of the Screen, Gone at 95
When Robert Duvall walked into a scene, he rarely announced himself. He arrived. A slouch, a half-smile, a voice that sounded like it had been sanded by a thousand weathered lines of dialogue—he had the uncanny ability to make the smallest gesture feel like revelation. On the morning the news broke that he had died at 95, tributes flowed like the slow, steady applause reserved for those whose work outlives them.
“He left the room exactly as he occupied life—calm, full of curiosity, and with a deep and abiding kindness,” his wife Luciana said in a statement shared with the world. “Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love.” It was an ending that felt true to the man many had come to know not only on screen but across farms, dance floors, and foreign stages.
From Annapolis to the World Stage
Born and raised amid the clipped flags and brass of Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a navy admiral and an amateur actress learned early how performance and discipline could coexist. After a stint in the Army and acting school in New York—where he roomed with a then-unknown Dustin Hoffman and struck up lifelong friendships with other struggling actors—Duvall moved from small television parts to a screen presence that critics and audiences could not ignore.
His first notable film appearance was an uncredited, haunting turn as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, a small but memorable presence that hinted at a lifetime of complex, layered performances to come. Over the next six decades he would appear in nearly 100 films, amassing seven Academy Award nominations and winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his soul-baring portrayal of a washed-up country singer in Tender Mercies.
Roles That Carved an American Myth
If Hollywood loves archetypes, Duvall loved remolding them. He could be the smooth consigliere—Tom Hagen—who negotiates between gods and gangsters in The Godfather, and then, in the next breath, a surf-obsessed lieutenant who watches the sunrise after napalm and declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” That line, immortalized in Apocalypse Now, only scratches the surface. It’s the cadence, the way he holds a cigarette, a look at a subordinate or lover, that made his figures feel lived-in and dangerous or tender in equal measure.
“He didn’t act his roles so much as he inhabited them,” says Dr. Maria Alvarez, a film historian who has taught courses on American cinema for more than 20 years. “Duvall understood the American imagination—the soldier, the rodeo cowboy, the fallen preacher—and he refracted those myths back to us with a humane and often wry lens. He made men’s contradictions visible without sermonizing.”
From Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore in Apocalypse Now to the domineering Bull Meechum in The Great Santini, from the ecstatic preacher in The Apostle (which he wrote and directed) to the stoic Gus McRae in Lonesome Dove, Duvall’s career mapped the breadth of American storytelling—heroic, small, cruel, tender, and always complicated.
A Career of Quiet Risks
He turned down the pay-off and the part of a lifetime at times, too—reportedly rejecting The Godfather Part III over a salary dispute—preferring instead creative control to comfort. That streak of independence carried him into filmmaking of his own: The Apostle and Assassination Tango are personal, idiosyncratic works that show an artist unafraid to steer his own course.
The Private Dancer: Tango, Farm Life and a Second Home
Off camera, Duvall cultivated a life that read like a parallel script. He split his time between Los Angeles, a sprawling 360-acre farm in Virginia, and Argentina, the country that would become central to his later life and marriage to Luciana Pedraza. There, he discovered the tango, a dance he embraced with seriousness and a boyish joy. He converted a barn into a dance hall where the music could chase off the dust and where, he liked to say, you learned more about a partner than any script could teach.
“He was a man of great appetites—food, music, conversation,” a longtime friend and neighbor on his Virginia farm recalled. “But he was also disciplined. If you were there to learn something, he’d listen and then teach, quietly.”
More Than Awards: A Legacy of Craft and Compassion
In an industry obsessed with flash, Duvall’s legacy is endurance. Seven Oscar nominations across a career that spanned more than sixty years and one Academy Award may quantify some measure of his success, but the truer measure lies in the anchors he provided to scenes, to films, and to younger actors who learned by watching him.
“You’d be surprised how many young actors would come by just to watch him breathe in a scene,” says Jasmine Carter, an actor who credits Duvall’s Lonesome Dove with shaping her early approach to performance. “He taught you that truth is not a big gesture. It’s the way you look when no one’s watching.”
He also showed a modern world that aging actors could still be central storytellers—directing, writing, and producing films well into their later years. In that sense, Duvall’s life offers a gentle rebuke to youth-obsessed cultures. In a moment when many industries reject older workers, his career suggests the opposite: experience, like vinyl that deepens with each spin, can yield new hues.
What Do We Lose When We Lose a Storyteller?
When an actor like Robert Duvall departs, what exactly vanishes? A face on celluloid, certainly. But also a particular way of looking at the human heart—its stubbornness, its generosity, its capacity for regret. In a global culture that often flattens characters into categories—the hero, the villain, the comic relief—Duvall relished the gray.
“He left us with a catalogue of performances that can be teachers for generations,” Dr. Alvarez reflects. “Not just in craft, but in empathy.”
Final Curtain
On last count, Robert Duvall’s filmography runs near a century of credits. His life was braided with music and mud, with Buenos Aires nights and Virginia mornings. He was a man who loved holding court at a dinner table, whose passions included a great meal and the slow intimacy of the tango. He was a husband, a friend, an artist who preferred to let work speak for him.
So ask yourself, when you sit down to a great film next week, to a scene that surprises you, to a line that lingers—who taught the actor on-screen how to be that honest? Chances are you’ll find a trace of Robert Duvall’s influence somewhere there, in the soft way a character exhales or the small, exact moments that turn performance into truth.
He leaves behind not only roles and awards, but a lesson: that acting can be a form of listening—and that a life lived with curiosity, craft, and tenderness becomes the richest kind of story.
Guthrie Urges Release of Mother While FBI Examines Glove Evidence
In the Desert Light: The Search for Nancy Guthrie and a Community Holding Its Breath
Early mornings in the Tucson suburbs are usually a study in stillness: low-slung stucco houses, the silhouettes of saguaros on the horizon, the tang of mesquite and orange blossom in the air. Lately, that quiet has been pierced by helicopters, by the rumble of law-enforcement vehicles, and by the low, insistent tremor of a family’s plea on repeat across television screens.
Nancy Guthrie — 84 years old, fragile, dependent on daily medication and a pacemaker — vanished from her home near Tucson on January 31. Her daughter, Savannah Guthrie, known to millions as the co-anchor of NBC’s Today show, has been the most visible voice in a campaign both private and public: “We still have hope,” Savannah told viewers in one of several raw, direct video appeals. “To whoever has her or knows where she is: it’s never too late to do the right thing.”
A timeline of worry
According to authorities, family members dropped Nancy off at her residence after a meal on the 31st. When she didn’t answer the next morning, relatives reported her missing. Investigators quickly concluded she could not have left on her own — her mobility was severely limited — and have treated the case as an abduction.
What followed reads like a modern investigative thriller: doorbell-camera footage showing a masked man in a ski mask, wearing a holster and carrying an overstuffed backpack; traces of blood on the front porch later confirmed to be Nancy’s; at least two purported ransom notes delivered to media outlets; and a flurry of searches that included a federal court-ordered search of a house in an affluent neighborhood less than three kilometres from Nancy’s home.
The small piece of evidence that could change everything
Of all the items collected by search teams in a roadside field about three kilometres from Nancy’s house — roughly 16 gloves among them — one glove has drawn the most attention. FBI investigators say the glove appears to match the pair worn by the masked man caught on camera. A private laboratory in Florida provided preliminary DNA testing on that glove, and the sample is now in federal hands, en route to the Combined DNA Index System — CODIS — for a national search.
“That single sample could produce a match as soon as it’s run through CODIS,” said a forensic analyst who has worked on similar cases. “It’s not guaranteed, but the potential for a break in the case is real. CODIS comparisons often take around 24 hours once the FBI officially receives the sample.”
Investigators stressed that most of the gloves collected were likely dropped by searchers, but the one submitted for analysis “is different,” according to the FBI. The agency says the evidence requires rigorous quality control before a match is announced — the kind of careful deliberation that can feel agonising when a family is waiting for answers.
Voices from the neighborhood
Neighbors describe a community shaken and organizing in equal measure. “You don’t expect this here, not around these parts,” said María Ortega, who has lived two doors down from the Guthrie residence for 20 years. “We walk our dogs at dawn. We wave to one another. Now, every rustle in the brush makes me turn my head.”
At a small cluster of coffee shops and taquerías a few blocks away, residents — retirees and young families alike — swapped updates and wild theories. “We’re all glued to the news,” said Tom Reynolds, a retired teacher. “You try to keep hope, but it’s like watching your hands fumble in the dark.”
Volunteers have scoured washes and brushlands, leaving water and notes pinned to mesquite trees. That community energy has been palpable. “People want to do something,” a local search coordinator said. “They’re combing the hills, handing out flyers, calling tips. The compassion is real.”
What the science can — and can’t — tell us
Forensic advances have transformed investigations in recent decades. A single DNA trace can point to a suspect, confirm a lineage, or clear an innocent person in hours. But the process is meticulous: samples must pass quality control and be officially logged before a CODIS run. Even when there’s a match, authorities then have to build a case that stands up in court.
“DNA can give you a name, but not always a motive,” cautioned Dr. Elena Moreno, a criminal justice professor who studies forensic evidence. “It tells you who may have been there. It doesn’t always tell you how events unfolded. That’s why you pair lab work with witness accounts, digital forensics, and good old investigative legwork.”
And there are other practical challenges here: elderly victims with health conditions are particularly vulnerable. In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of missing-person reports are filed each year; most are resolved quickly, but cases involving seniors or people with medical dependencies are particularly time-sensitive because of health concerns.
The family’s public grief
Savannah Guthrie has returned to the public spotlight not as a news presenter but as a daughter — her voice threaded with gratitude, fear and an unyielding belief in human decency. She and her siblings have posted videos pleading for their mother’s return, saying they are even willing to discuss ransom demands if it would bring Nancy home.
“There’s not been any proof of life,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told reporters, “but there’s not been any proof of death either.” Those words hang in the space between despair and hope, a liminal place where families and investigators must live until facts arrive.
Broader echoes: safety, media, and the modern missing-persons crisis
This case sits at the intersection of several broader conversations: the vulnerability of older adults, the power and pitfalls of viral media, and the relentless march of forensic technology. It asks uncomfortable questions of communities everywhere: how do we safeguard the elderly? How does intense media scrutiny affect investigations and families? And how should we balance the urgent need for public tips with the caution required by law enforcement?
“There’s a global lesson here,” said Dr. Moreno. “As populations age, societies must think more deliberately about elder safety and community support networks. This isn’t just a local tragedy — it’s a reminder.”
How you can help — and what to watch for
If you think you have information, local authorities ask that you contact the Pima County Sheriff’s Office or the FBI. Tips, no matter how small they may seem, can change the shape of an investigation.
- Keep an eye on official law-enforcement releases to avoid amplifying rumours.
- Share verified appeals from the Guthrie family or investigators rather than speculative posts.
- If you’re in Tucson, watch for community search efforts organized by authorities to ensure volunteers are coordinated and safe.
What to carry forward
Stories like this feel unbearably close — a beloved elder gone, a public figure’s private heartbreak played out on national television. They also force us to reckon with how we treat vulnerability in our neighborhoods and, more broadly, what tools we ask of science and community to keep people safe.
As you read this, think of the porch where Nancy’s blood was found, the grainy footage of a masked figure, the glove in a roadside field, and the voice of a daughter saying, simply, “We still have hope.” What would you do if your neighbor was gone? How would you want your community to respond?
The investigation continues. So does the waiting. So does the search for a woman who, in the desert dawn, disappeared from a life built on small routines and the love of her family. For now, the story is unfinished, and every new tip, every careful step in the lab, could be the one that brings an answer — and maybe, finally, a return.
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