Kenyan president approves new officials to head elections body
The East African nation's next general election will be held in 2027, but Ruto is already under pressure from street protests led by young Kenyans dissatisfied with high living costs, corruption and police brutality.
The new chairman and six commissioners appointed to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission will serve for the next four years, according to the notice issued late on Thursday. They were due to be sworn in on Friday.
Ruto suspended four election commissioners in December 2022 after they rejected his victory in elections held earlier that year. The dispute proceeded to the Supreme Court, which upheld Ruto's win and rejected the commissioners' arguments that the vote tallying process had been opaque.
The commission had been operating without a chairperson or commissioners since 2023, when the terms of the former chairman and the two remaining commissioners expired.
The appointment of new election commissioners, who are chosen by an interview panel and then submitted to the president for approval, had been delayed in part due to several legal petitions, which a high court dismissed on Thursday.
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Reuters
7 hours ago
- Reuters
ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says
BOSTON, July 13 (Reuters) - U.S. immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours' notice, a top Trump administration official said in a memo, offering a preview of how deportations could ramp up. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will generally wait at least 24 hours to deport someone after informing them of their removal to a so-called "third country," according to a memo dated Wednesday, July 9, from the agency's acting director, Todd Lyons. ICE could remove them, however, to a so-called "third country" with as little as six hours' notice "in exigent circumstances," said the memo, as long as the person has been provided the chance to speak with an attorney. The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them "without the need for further procedures." The new ICE policy suggests President Donald Trump's administration could move quickly to send migrants to countries around the world. The Supreme Court in June lifted a lower court's order limiting such deportations without a screening for fear of persecution in the destination country. Following the high court's ruling and a subsequent order from the justices, the Trump administration sent eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam to South Sudan. The administration last week pressed officials from five African nations - Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon - to accept deportees from elsewhere, Reuters reported. The Washington Post first reported, opens new tab the new ICE memo. The administration argues the third country deportations help swiftly remove migrants who should not be in the U.S., including those with criminal convictions. Advocates have criticized the deportations as dangerous and cruel, since people could be sent to countries where they could face violence, have no ties and do not speak the language. Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit against such rapid third-county deportations at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the policy "falls far short of providing the statutory and due process protections that the law requires." Third-country deportations have been done in the past, but the tool could be more frequently used as Trump tries to ramp up deportations to record levels. During Trump's 2017-2021 presidency, his administration deported small numbers of people from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala. Former President Joe Biden's Democratic administration struck a deal with Mexico to take thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, since it was difficult to deport migrants to those nations. The new ICE memo was filed as evidence in a lawsuit over the wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.
BBC News
10 hours ago
- BBC News
Former Nigerian leader Muhammadu Buhari dies aged 82
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, who has died age 82 in a London clinic, was a former military ruler and self-styled converted democrat who returned to power through elections but struggled to convince Nigerians he could deliver on the change he a natural politician, he was seen as aloof and austere. But he retained a reputation for personal honesty - a rare feat for a politician in three failed attempts, Buhari achieved a historic victory in 2015, becoming the country's first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent. In 2019, he was re-elected for another four-year had always been popular among the poor of the north (known as the "talakawa" in the Hausa language) but for the 2015 campaign, he had the advantage of a united opposition grouping behind of those who supported him thought his military background and disciplinarian credentials were what the country needed to get to grips with the Islamist insurgency in the north. Buhari also promised to tackle corruption and nepotism in government, and create employment opportunities for young his time in office coincided with a slump in global oil prices and the country's worst economic crisis in administration also came under fire for its handling of insecurity. While campaigning he had promised to defeat the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. But the group remains a threat and one of its factions is now affiliated to the so-called Islamic State was also an upsurge in deadly clashes between farmers and ethnic Fulani herders in central Nigeria. Mr Buhari, a Fulani, was accused of not being tough enough on the herders or doing enough to stop the activities of so-called bandits in the north-western part of the country saw the abduction of hundreds of secondary school his watch armed forces were accused of human rights abuses - like opening fire on anti-police brutality protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos in October 2020. Who was Muhammadu Buhari? Muhammadu Buhari was born in December 1942 in Daura in Katsina state in the far north of Nigeria, near the border with Niger. At the time, Nigeria was controlled by the British and it would be another 18 years before the country gained father, who died when he was four, was Fulani, while his mother, who brought him up, was Kanuri. In a 2012 interview, Buhari spoke of being his father's 23rd child and his mother's 13th. He said his only recollection of his father was of the two of them and one of his half-brothers being thrown from the back of a horse. The young Buhari attended primary school in Daura and then boarding school in the city of Katsina. After leaving school, he was admitted to the Nigerian Military Training College, joining the Nigerian army shortly after undertook officer training in the UK from 1962-1963 and then began his steady climb up the later years, Buhari attributed his disciplinarian bent to spending his formative years at boarding school, where corporal punishment was the norm, and in the military. He was "lucky" to have experienced such tough environments, which taught him to work hard, he 1966, there was a military coup and then counter-coup in Nigeria - a time of upheaval for army officers but Buhari always maintained he was too junior to have played any significant than 10 years later, under a military government, Buhari had risen to become military governor of the north-east, an area then comprising six less than a year, Buhari, now in his mid-30s, was promoted again, becoming federal commissioner for petroleum and natural resources (in effect oil minister) in 1976 under Olusegun Obasanjo in his first spell as Nigerian head of state. Indiscipline and corruption By 1978, Buhari, then a colonel, had returned to being a military commander. His tough stance in 1983 - when some Nigerian islands were annexed in Lake Chad by Chadian soldiers - is still remembered in the north-east, after he blockaded the area and drove off the end of 1983 saw another coup, against elected President Shehu Shagari, and Buhari, now a major-general, became the country's military ruler. By his own account, he was not one of the plotters but was installed (and subsequently discarded) by those who held the real power and needed a accounts suggest he played a more active role in removing Shagari than he was willing to admit. Buhari ruled for 20 months, a period remembered for a campaign against indiscipline and corruption, as well as for human rights 500 politicians, officials and businessmen were jailed as part of a campaign against waste and saw this as the heavy-handed repression of military rule. Others remember it as a praiseworthy attempt to fight the endemic corruption that was holding back Nigeria's retained a rare reputation for honesty among Nigeria's politicians, both military and civilian, largely because of this campaign. As part of his "war against indiscipline", he ordered Nigerians to form neat queues at bus stops, under the sharp eyes of whip-wielding soldiers. Civil servants who were late for work were publicly humiliated by being forced to do frog of his measures might have been seen as merely eccentric. But others were genuinely repressive, such as a decree to restrict press freedom, under which journalists were government also locked up Nigeria's greatest musical hero, Fela Kuti - a thorn in the side of successive leaders - on trumped-up charges relating to currency exports. Buhari's attempts to re-balance the public finances by curbing imports led to many job losses and the closure of part of anti-corruption measures, he also ordered that the currency be replaced - the colour of the naira notes was changed - forcing all holders of old notes to exchange them at banks within a limited rose while living standards fell, and in August 1985 Buhari was ousted and imprisoned for 40 months. Army chief Gen Ibrahim Babangida took over. Historic election victory After his release and, he said, having seen the consequences of the break-up of the Soviet Union, Buhari decided to enter party politics, now convinced of the virtues of multiparty democracy and free and fair this, Buhari always defended the 1983 coup, saying in 2005: "The military came in when it was absolutely necessary and the elected people had failed the country."He also rejected accusations that his measures against journalists and others had gone too far, insisting that he had been merely applying the laws that others had been breaking. He was elected president in 2015, becoming the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent since the return of multiparty democracy in president, Buhari made a virtue of his "incorruptibility", declaring his relatively modest wealth and saying he had "spurned several past opportunities" to enrich was plain spoken by nature, which sometimes played well for him in the media and sometimes few doubted his personal commitment to fighting corruption and there were several notable scalps, some questioned whether the structures enabling mismanagement had really been reformed. And attempts to improve youth employment prospects were, at best, a work in progress. 'Bag of rice' On the day Buhari left office, some Nigerians were asked in a video that was widely shared on social media, what they would remember most about his time in office, and all respondents said the same thing: 'Bag of rice'.The reason was simple - rice is the staple food in the country.A standard 50kg (110lb) bag of rice, which could help feed a household of between eight and 10 for about a month, cost just 7,500 naira ($5; £3) under President Goodluck Jonathan, who was defeated by Buhari in 2015, but went up to 60,000 naira a few years led to hunger in many parts of the huge surge in the price of rice was because, in an echo of his earlier policy as a military ruler, Buhari banned the importation of rice to encourage more Nigerian farmers to grow the local producers were unable to meet the high demand and many of his supporters lost their faith in Danyaro, a resident of the northern city of Kano, said he had backed Buhari since he first contested the presidency in 2003."I used to buy a 50kg bag of rice under Goodluck [Jonathan] but when Buhari came, I found it difficult to buy even a 25kg bag of rice because it became so expensive," he told the one point, even Buhari's wife threatened not to support his re-election bid. 'Baba go slow' Nigerians love nicknames and some of the country's leaders' nicknames have stuck even long after they left example, former military leader Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida is still called "Maradona" for what people perceived as his tactical dribbles on issues and Buhari, it was "Baba [Father] go slow" after it took him six months to name his first cabinet on assuming office in to his nickname years later, Buhari said it wasn't his fault that it took so long to get anything done."Yes, we are slow because the system is slow. It's not Baba that is slow but it is the system so I am going by this system and I hope we will make it," he said in 2018. Nigerian politics in 2022-2023 remains one of the most interesting in the country's democratic the minds of many, it was the first time that a sitting president wasn't really bothered about who his successor was going to Buhari declared he would support whoever won his party's (All Progressives Congress) nomination but insiders say behind the scenes he was body language emboldened all five candidates seeking the APC's endorsement and their supporters all went around saying they had his one point it felt as if Buhari opposed the candidacy of his eventual successor, Bola followed was the declaration of the "naira swap policy" which the Buhari administration announced would, among other things, limit the influence of money in the 2023 Nigerians believed that the policy was targeted at preventing Tinubu from becoming president even though he had been chosen as the APC policy involved the confiscation of trillions of old naira notes and their replacement with new notes for the highest there were not enough new notes, leading to shortages and suffering by millions, particularly the less well-off, who rely on cash for their daily policy was only suspended after a Supreme Court ruling, just days before the won narrowly, with 37% of votes cast, as the opposition was assessment of Buhari's presidency must take account his declining health, which caused him to take significant absences from work, especially during his first former military ruler may have reinvented himself as a democrat but there was no such commitment to transparency concerning his own health, with Nigerians left uninformed about the fitness of their head of state for Buhari married twice, first to Safinatu Yusuf from 1971-1988, and then in 1989 to Aisha Halilu, who survives him. He had 10 children. Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
South Wales Guardian
15 hours ago
- South Wales Guardian
Trump ‘considering' taking away US citizenship from comedian Rosie O'Donnell
The move comes despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government. 'Because of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,' Mr Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that Ms O'Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland 'if they want her'. The two have criticised each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump's involvement in politics. In recent days, O'Donnell on social media denounced Mr Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive tax breaks and spending cuts plan. It is just the latest threat by Mr Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk. But Ms O'Donnell's situation is notably different from Mr Musk, who was born in South Africa. Ms O'Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to US citizenship. The US State Department notes on its website that US citizens by birth or naturalisation may relinquish US nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship. Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the 14th Amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship. 'The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,' Ms Frost said in an email on Saturday. 'In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.' Ms O'Donnell moved to Ireland after Mr Trump defeated vice president Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she is in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage. Responding to Mr Trump on Saturday, Ms 'Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and 'add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn'.
