HARARE, Zimbabwe—A television game show in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos has an unforgiving rule: Speak English and you lose. For a U.S.-born millennial in the audience and a student of her parents’ mother tongue, the high-stakes setting is a perfect classroom.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Canadian speaks to a teacher about 8,000 miles away in Zimbabwe, learning a language her parents feared she would never speak.

“Mhoroi,” Nyashadzashe Machingura says cheerfully with a pronounced Canadian accent while greeting in Zimbabwe’s vernacular Shona.

The scenes capture a new generation of interest and entrepreneurship around African languages once pushed to the margins by decades of colonialism. Often seen as secondary to English, French and Portuguese, they are enjoying a renaissance that is also creating business opportunities.

There are between 1,500 and 3,000 languages in Africa

Africa is home to over one billion people speaking roughly a third of the world’s languages, with between 1,500 and 3,000 across 54 countries, according to UNESCO.

Experts say the revival in some of them is driven partly by second- and third-generation Africans in the diaspora finding it easier to reconnect with their roots and communicate with older relatives, thanks to social media, online learning and entertainment.

“There were times I definitely felt left out because my family around me were all speaking Shona. And I just couldn’t understand them,” Nyashadzashe said after a lesson covering traditional greetings, proverbs and ancestral clan symbols. She said she had eaten the food and worn the traditional clothing but still felt left out.

But now her conversations with her grandparents in Zimbabwe are growing longer.

“Being able to connect with them on that level makes me really proud of my heritage,” she said.

African languages were never ‘modernized’

Her Zimbabwe-based tutor, Shungu Chidovi, left her banking career in January to focus full-time on ZimbOriginal, an online platform that teaches Shona through storytelling, book clubs and “buddy pairing” exchanges.

Now she teaches about two dozen learners in Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and Scotland, charging $50 a month.

The business, part of a small but growing number of online initiatives teaching African languages, emerged almost by accident. Chidovi began writing a blog about Zimbabwean traditions in 2016. Readers began asking whether she taught Shona.

“I didn’t see it at the time that I was really writing about the Shona language,” Chidovi said.

Western languages were prioritized

Like many in Africa, she grew up with the understanding that to get ahead she had to embrace Western languages instead of her mother tongue. English remains the dominant language for education, business and government affairs in the southern African nation that officially recognizes 16 mostly Indigenous languages.

“When you talk of Africa, you talk of English, French, Portuguese,” said Believe Mubonderi, a linguistics lecturer at Zimbabwe Open University. His research notes the importance of ensuring that African languages have a place in technologies shaping how people communicate, learn and trade.

“In most cases, African languages were sidelined. They were never exposed or modernized to be used in commerce, science and technology,” he said. “When a language has a very low status, there’s a danger that that language eventually becomes endangered.”

Culture and connection are driving the new interest

Governments and international organizations are trying to reverse that trend.

The African Union’s 2022 decision to adopt Kiswahili, spoken in much of east Africa, as an official working language has raised its international profile. The United Nations declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

And the AU continental body and UNESCO are supporting efforts to document and revitalize African languages, including using artificial intelligence to generate and translate children’s books and teacher guides.

But there’s a steep digital disadvantage. UNESCO says only 10 languages around the world dominate the “internet ecosystem,” while less than 2% of African languages have a meaningful online presence. That leaves many with too little data to train artificial intelligence systems.

Still, momentum for change is growing, with much of it from Africans abroad.

“People of African descent have come to realize that we also have our own identity which we need to embrace and be proud of. You go on Facebook, you go on TikTok, you are seeing many different efforts,” Mubonderi said. Younger diaspora Africans “are trying by all means to revive, to revitalize, to make use of these languages.”

Chindovi said she hears that desire from children and their parents.

“When people are away from home, they long for home more than when they are home,” she said.

Nigerian game show penalizes English speakers

That hunger for connection is also reshaping culture.

In Nigeria, a game show called “Masoyinbo,” meaning “Do not speak English,” has turned Yoruba, one of the country’s most widely spoken languages, into prime-time entertainment. Contestants, including diaspora Nigerians, are tested on Yoruba language and culture, with prizes reaching thousands of dollars.

Host Olalekan Fabilola, who started the show in 2024, sees its popularity as part of a wider shift.

“If ‘Masoyinbo’ had started like 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been what it is now,” he said. “But we are in the age of cultural resurgence. People want to go back to their roots. Everyone wants to know why, where they are from, and so it’s timely.”

Tomi Adeshokan, a New Jersey resident who is learning to perfect her Yoruba with Fabilola as a tutor, was part of the audience during a recent recording of the show. She said she lost daily exposure to Yoruba after moving out of her father’s home before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, she joined Clubhouse just to hear the language and later began taking classes. Now she was back visiting family.

“It’s very important for us to immerse ourselves in our culture and not to fully identify with other cultures, like the American, the Western culture,” Adeshokan said.

Dan Ikpoyi reported from Lagos, Nigeria

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The leadership of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and the Army praised the continuous public mobilization, describing it as the ultimate deterrent against the United States and Israel.

They commended the historic turning point that has shattered Western calculations for “regime change” and societal fracture.

Major General Mohsen Rezaei, the SNSC secretary, framed the 200-night mobilization not merely as a security response, but as a definitive break from Iran’s tragic history of foreign subjugation over the past two centuries and before the Islamic Revolution. 

“In the last 200 years, Iran was repeatedly targeted by invasions, occupations, and foreign interventions, where a lack of national cohesion led to defeats, unequal treaties, and the loss of territory,” the SNSC statement read.

“But today, we can say with certainty that history did not repeat itself. In these 200 days, the people of Iran showed that their entire existence is dedicated to their country.”

The top security official said the Iranian public has become the most vital pillar of national deterrence, successfully dismantling the “false dichotomies” of internal division that Western intelligence agencies hoped to exploit.

“The enemy, which sought to break the nation’s will through military pressure, is now on its knees before your resolve,” General Rezaei noted, calling the nighttime vigils an immortal epic that has effectively healed the historical wounds of foreign humiliation.

A renewed oath

Echoing these sentiments, IRGC Commander-in-Chief Major General Ahmad Vahidi described the rallies as a “national awakening” and a profound spiritual manifestation.

General Vahidi highlighted that the massive street presence served as a renewed oath of allegiance to the new Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, following the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the recent 40-day war of aggression.

General Vahidi warned that having failed on the battlefield, the U.S.-Israeli coalition is now pivoting to cognitive warfare, economic strangulation, and attempts to induce public fatigue.

He urged the public to counter this hybrid war by embracing a resistance economy and advancing domestic scientific production.

“The IRGC stands ready to avenge the pure blood of our martyred Leader and will decisively crush any miscalculation by the enemy.”

‘Iran’s internal structural strength’

Army Commander-in-Chief Major General Amir Hatami also praised the demonstrations for showing the “internal structural strength” of the Islamic Republic.

He said the continuous public backing has completely upended hostile military planning and psychological operations.

“This historic presence proved that Iran’s true power, alongside the deterrence of our armed forces, is rooted in the faith and unity of the nation.”

The Iranian general reaffirmed the Army’s unwavering commitment to defending the territorial integrity and national honor under the command of the new Leader.

The nightly demonstrations first began in the immediate aftermath of February 28, when the United States and Israel launched a full-scale war of aggression against Iran.

What began as spontaneous outpourings of grief and outrage following the bombardment of Iranian cities and civilian infrastructure quickly crystallized into a synchronized, nationwide movement.

By early March, citizens across Iran’s major metropolitan centers and rural provinces alike had established a routine of gathering in public squares every night after sunset.

These nightly vigils serve a dual purpose on the Iranian home front. On one level, they act as a massive morale-boosting mechanism for the armed forces, with crowds frequently directing their chants and solidarity toward the frontline soldiers of the Army and the IRGC.

On another level, they function as a rejection of Western psychological warfare. Participants routinely light candles for the martyrs, wave national flags, and chant anti-oppression slogans, signaling an unwavering refusal to capitulate to foreign coercion or economic strangulation.

(PressTV.co.uk)

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Individuals or businesses discovered engaging in trade with Israeli settlements may be subject to a prison sentence of up to three years, according to the proposed Norwegian trade restrictions bill.

Norway’s Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, expressed optimism that the law would be passed by parliament this coming autumn.

Eide told the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that “Lawmakers are facing increasing pressure to respond to the deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories.”

He added that numerous other nations are adopting measures similar to those which the Oslo government has already proposed with the bill. Eide said he believed that Israel has grown excessively accustomed to intimidating Western nations by accusing them of anti-Semitism whenever they criticize Israel for its abuses and breaches of international law.

On September 8, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden announced plans to implement trade restrictions on products sourced from Israeli settlements.

About 750,000 Israeli settlers live in 156 illegal settlements and 360 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East al-Quds. They routinely carry out attacks aimed at forcibly displacing Palestinians, according to Palestinian figures.

The UN regards these settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions because they are built on occupied land. The UN Security Council has banned Israel’s settlement activity in several resolutions.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of historical Palestine illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds. Those rulings, like so many before them, have remained mere words.

(PressTV.co.uk)

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When the BRIC group, as it was known then, first emerged, it was greeted with amusement as another exotic variety of alphabet soup in the age of globalization. As it became a more permanent fixture, it was regarded as a poor man’s version of a global club, like a humble answer to the G7.

More recently, it has come to be feared, not least by U.S. President Donald Trump, as a potential threat to the dominance of the American dollar. In the run-up to the 2026 BRICS summit in New Delhi, the Western media shifted its focus to the divergences within the group, essentially portraying it as something less than the sum of its parts.

However, all these interpretations miss the actual significance of BRICS, which is its role as an early model of the emerging multipolar order.

Over the past five centuries or so, roughly the period of Western global hegemony, the world order has invariably been based on the dominance of a single power, whether Spain, France, Britain or America, or a combination of powers, such as the Concert of Europe or the U.S.-Soviet bipolar system.

Single-power hegemony remains very much alive in the West today, whether one looks at NATO, AUKUS, international financial institutions or Washington-led alliances in Asia and elsewhere. True, the European Union does not exactly fit this model, but it has NATO as its bedrock, while its members maintain strong, and unequal, relations with the United States.

What keeps these countries together isn’t merely geopolitics and geoeconomics, given they also share a broadly similar worldview, even if its liberal and conservative versions can occasionally clash rather vehemently. Taken together, they represent Western civilization, along with a handful of associates, but BRICS is a very different creature.

Its members vary enormously in population, territory, economic weight, military strength and technological and scientific capabilities and their histories aren’t as closely intertwined as those of Europe and North America, while their political systems are highly diverse and their domestic and foreign policies often point in different directions.

Most fundamentally, they represent several great civilizations, including Chinese and Confucian, Indian and Hindu, Islamic, Persian and Arab, Latin American, African and Russian. In this sense, they’re anything but like-minded, yet they reflect the diversity of humankind itself.

What BRICS obviously lacks is a leader because China, with its 1.5 billion people, the world’s largest economy in purchasing-power-parity terms and a leading position in advanced technology, isn’t the group’s boss and nor is Russia, the world’s fourth-largest economy by the same measure, and alongside the United States, a nuclear superpower.

Despite what Moscow sees as NATO waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, it hasn’t attempted to turn BRICS into an anti-Western bloc.

India, meanwhile, is the third major economic power in the group and has overtaken China as the world’s most populous country. It still maintains close ties with America and Western Europe while preserving and developing its historical links with Russia, even as it remains wary of China.

Iran and the United Arab Emirates, for their part, find themselves on opposite sides of the ongoing war involving Iran, Israel, and the United States, but BRICS isn’t unraveling.

Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to the Delhi summit, his first visit to India in seven years and a sign that Beijing clearly doesn’t want to give Washington an opportunity to exploit existing problems in Sino-Indian relations to stoke tensions between Asia’s two great powers.

Meanwhile, even as it lashes out against U.S. bases in the region, Iran is reaching out to its Arab neighbors to discuss a regional security framework in the Persian Gulf.

The durability of Russo-Chinese relations since their normalization in 1989 rests not only on a convergence of fundamental interests, but also on Beijing’s and Moscow’s ability to manage their differences carefully on specific issues.

While the political philosophies of BRICS countries differ widely, they adhere to several key principles that make cooperation possible and at the top of the list is sovereignty as we see Russia, China, India, Iran and others not only preach sovereignty but seek to defend and promote it.

Closely linked to sovereignty is equality, and Russia’s Western adversaries have long sought to humiliate Moscow by portraying it as Beijing’s vassal, as if Western Europe’s kowtowing to Washington and Trump were mere politeness.

In reality, Sino-Russian political relations are conducted on an equal footing and the same applies to Russia’s relations with its other BRICS partners, from Brazil and Indonesia to Egypt.

Sovereign equality also implies non-interference in other nations’ domestic politics which comes more easily to countries that don’t present themselves as models or sole guardians of universal values. Accepting others as they are, and respecting the right of other peoples to have their own institutions, is a prerequisite for genuine relations between civilizations.

There’s no need to make BRICS appear to be something it is not, it’s not an alliance or an anti-Western coalition, and if anything, its record offers a glimpse of a different kind of world order.

This is no paradise, but it’s an order in which diversity can thrive, sovereignty is treated as sacred, differences can be managed and consensus, rather than diktat, is the guiding principle.

Decision-making is admittedly difficult and conflicts, including violent ones, are by no means excluded, but it offers a much fairer deal than an order in which one nation or group of nations can impose itself on others, lay down rules for everyone except itself, and then judge and punish those it considers offenders.

Dmitry Trenin, is president of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a research professor at the Higher School of Economics.

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In 2015, under the auspices of the African Union Commission of Inquiry, anthropologist and scholar Professor Mahmood Mamdani said South Sudan was not a “failed state; it was a failed transition.”

According to Mamdani, South Sudan’s mandated breakaway in 2011 to form a new independent nation-state was rushed and has also resulted into the recurring violence in the neighboring state of Sudan. Mamdani suggested that for peace to prevail in the world’s youngest nation-state, the current political class should step aside.

Mamdani was part of the African Union Commission of Inquiry panel on South Sudan which sought to inquire into the causes of the violence. He also says the United Nations must take responsibility for doing little or nothing to mitigate the violence when it first broke out in December of 2013.

On July 29, of this year, the Global Center Tracker published by the Washington Center for Peace and Security, released a report titled: “Instability in South Sudan,” on cfr.org.

A synopsis of the report also defines the conflict as ethnic and political rivalry between President Kiir and Vice President Machar. Despite a 2018 peace deal, “the agreement’s core reforms, including army unification, a permanent constitution, and elections, were never implemented,” the report notes.

According to the report, “Kiir’s arrest of Machar in 2025 collapsed the unity government entirely, reigniting conflict that has since displaced hundreds of thousands and pushed the country toward full-scale famine.”

To give substance to South Sudan as a failed state we review its history prior to the 2011 referendum. That history included Dr. John Garang, the prominent Sudanese rebel leader that championed the vision of a united, democratic, and pluralistic “new Sudan,” where he would serve as vice president. He did not support, as Salva Kiir did, the secession of the South.

A developmental economist by profession, Dr. Garang was one of the major influences on the movement that led to the foundation of South Sudan’s independence from the rule of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. From 1983 to 2005, he led the Sudan People’s Liberation Army Movement (SPLA/M).

Dr. Garang achieved a core part of this vision when he successfully negotiated the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Under this historic power-sharing deal, he was officially sworn in as the first vice president of Sudan, July 2005, serving alongside President Omar al-Bashir.

He served as first vice president of Sudan for three weeks, from the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 until his death, in a July 30, 2005, helicopter crash under questionable circumstances.

His widow attributed his death to an assassination. According to a 2007 report published on sudantribune.com, Ms. Garang, at a public event said: “When my husband died, I did not come out openly and say he was killed because I knew of the consequences. At the back of my mind, I know my husband was assassinated.”

She gave no evidence to back her assertion. An investigation concluded that pilot error was to blame for the crash.

Years prior to the split of South Sudan from Sudan peace talks and negotiations to resolve conflict were taking place. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, who has always been an arbiter of peace and unity, participated in some of these efforts.

During the 1994 talks in Kampala, Uganda, that included Dr. Garang and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Minister Farrakhan was initially involved. The talks were designed to help settle the longstanding conflicts between North and South Sudan.

As reported previously in Africa Watch, in a January 2020 article published in The Final Call, Minister Abdul Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, said that Museveni and Garang both had very high regard for Minister Farrakhan and his ability to act as a “neutral arbiter.”

They were preparing for Intergovernmental Authority on Development-hosted peace talks in Kenya. But the American Ambassador to Sudan, Donald K. Peterson, “didn’t want Farrakhan involved,” said Minister Akbar Muhammad, in the Africa Watch column, titled, “Farrakhan’s African influence and the year of Return to the Motherland.”

“Minister Akbar Muhammad added it was ‘reported to me … the talks would actually discontinue unless Minister Farrakhan was removed from the discussion.’ IGAD members obviously had bowed to the wishes of the U.S. ambassador. Not wanting to be ‘where he was not wanted,’ Min. Farrakhan left the talks,” my 2020 column noted.

While appearing on May 7, 2006, on “The Open Line Show,” on 98.7 KISS FM, hosted by the late James Mtume, Minister Farrakhan shared his recollections of meeting in Uganda with Garang. Minister Akbar was also in the studio. Minister Farrakhan said he met with Museveni in Uganda, then he spoke on Garang.

“The most important meeting was the meeting with Brother John Garang, who for 20 years was fighting the government in Khartoum. Why was there a fight? Was it (the fight) over slavery? No time during our talk with John Garang, which was four hours in length, was there ever a mention of slavery. But when I mentioned the word justice John Garang’s wife broke down and cried. She said that I was the only person who came and talked about justice. Now what was the injustice?”

Ms. Garang later expressed deep appreciation for Minister Farrakhan’s willingness to openly address the core injustices and racial and ethnic dynamics at play during a turbulent time when international mediation struggled to bridge the divides in Sudan.

Discussing the history of racism in the region, Minister Farrakhan explained:

“The Arabs have mixed their blood with the Africans that lived in the North. They are Arabized and Islamic. And the same racist poison that has poisoned the bloodstream of Islam has made the Arab north feel superior to the Christian and animist African south. The south is Black, Black, Black … So Black until there is Blue in their color. So, when you have, like the enemy has done to us (race-mixing in U.S.). When you’re lighter, you think you’re better than your Black brother or sister.”

Minister Farrakhan in his divine guidance and insight also warned of the motives of those who want to continue fomenting disunity in Sudan and South Sudan. He also spoke on the power of a united Sudan.

Minister Farrakhan stated in an April 8, 2007, message, “The War of Armageddon: How Strong Is The Foundation, Can We Survive?” that America wanted “to set up a secular government in the Sudan and overthrow the Islamist regime.”

“The Sudan is so rich, potentially, that this area—if cultivated—could feed the whole of Africa. Sudan has oil in the South, oil in the West, and an Islamist regime in the North in the capital of Khartoum. America does not want an Islamist regime in Khartoum,” he said.

Before 2011, Sudan was Africa’s largest country. With Garang’s reconciliation and coalition government and Min. Farrakhan’s call for “justice” for Sudan’s disenfranchised Black population peace and unity could have been attained. Landlocked Southern Sudan—home of Sudan’s oil and mineral wealth, and arable land along with utilizing the North’s infrastructure, pipeline, and ports to ship oil to market, as a united and strong alliance would be good for the continent.

Follow Jehron Muhammad @Africawatchfcn

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However, for many families, the day meant making the hard decision to send their children to school or keep their children at home because there was no food for lunch, no shoes, no water, and no way to cope with a school system stretched to its limits.

Mothers shared their anxiety with Marti Noticia, a Cuban newspaper.  One mother told the outlet that the country is not ready for the school year to begin, explaining that none of her three daughters are going to school.

If nothing is available, how can they go to school, she asked? Bread cannot be bought for a snack since a single roll costs thousands and thousands of units. With no electricity all night, the situation is even worse.

For these families, the consequences of the unjust U.S. blockade go beyond politics because they affect everyday life. Cuban authorities state that the lack of fuel and electricity, the result of Washington’s harmful “energy blockade,” has made it difficult to distribute food. In some areas, schools can serve lunch for only the first two weeks, leaving parents to worry about how their children will get meals afterward.

A second mother shared her concerns, her voice showing how tired she was as she spoke about the constant struggle: “If the food they are giving us is merely a piece of bread containing bad ham, then what are they going to provide? … Nowadays there is no lunch, no electricity, no water, no transport, and they can’t give the children anything to eat since the prices are too high.”

For families who decided to send their children the first day, September 1, or “sobremesfuerzo,” this extra effort was the price of sending their children to school.  For others, it was simply too great a burden.

‘Everyone is invited’: The struggle to fill the classroom

A major difficulty is the teacher shortage. Cuban authorities explained this is due to the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy, which causes numerous professionals to either leave the country or seek better employment opportunities.

According to Education Minister Naima Trujillo Barreto, only 73% of teaching posts are filled.  This leaves approximately 24,000 positions available. Havana suffers the most, with about 3,000 teachers being transferred from the eastern provinces to assist there.

“This is going to be a school year for which our greatest achievement will be the fact that we are able to get through it,” said Minister Trujillo, conveying the great significance of the situation.

In response, the government has developed inventive solutions and is asking university students, retired professionals, and other willing citizens to take over classrooms, showing society’s commitment to education. As Minister Trujillo encouraged, according to the LA Times, “All are invited; anyone who can contribute is welcome.”

The lack of teachers also affects children’s well-being. Families report that many of their children went to school after sleeping little because of the heat, without eating breakfast, and therefore found it difficult to concentrate.   These are a few of the difficult decisions many families must make.

The fabric of the crisis: Uniform shortages

School uniforms are also affected by the blockade. Because of power cuts and difficulties importing materials, textile factories have ceased operations; as a result, only 12% of the demand for primary school uniforms is being met.

Due to inflation, the cost of uniforms has risen to between $2 and $5, a sum which The Straits Times points out is high given that the average monthly income for Cubans is only $10.

This places additional pressure on families already coping with inflation and shortages, since parents often must hire private tailors or modify their children’s old uniforms. This extra effort shows how committed they are to their children’s future.

“The schools are now relying on households and on the parents,” lamented Yannay Miranda to the AFP (Agence France-Presse), a mother of a six-year-old.

Although acknowledging the sacrifice, President Miguel Díaz-Canel stressed the importance of the effort and said that defending social programs such as education, even against the U.S. “plan of asphyxiation,” is a revolution which must be defended.

The struggle to get children to school started last school year when the blockade took effect. Yemaris Roriquees Lopez explained to The New York Times in a podcast that she would leave her house in a village in western Cuba every morning at 7 a.m. with her two sons, ages twelve and four, and stand on the side of the road hoping someone would drive by offering a ride to her children’s school. 

A country’s future against all odds

Despite the difficulties, Cuba’s attitude is one of firm determination. Roberto Morales Ojeda, a senior party official, posted on social media that the beginning of the school year means “overcoming the rigors of the blackout, rising above the burden caused by shortages, and looking for alternatives when others would have decided to give up.”

To cope, schools are adjusting schedules to use daylight, focusing on core subjects when power is available and allowing students to wear comfortable clothing instead of uniforms. A few mothers are concerned about what the future holds and told Marti Noticias  that “Children are not going to have a future the way we are.”

However, people such as Kasumy Chiu told The Strait Times, “We woke up to no electricity … but so long as they have the opportunity to learn, we are willing to make sacrifices.”

Many Cubans refer to the blockade as genocidal and argue that its aim is to starve the country and deprive it of its independence. Yet Cuba and its people will not surrender. The school year spanning 2026 and 2027 demonstrates that although America may restrict supplies, it cannot stifle the human spirit, a parent’s love, or a nation’s determination to secure its children’s future. As a commentary in the Cuban-based Granma stated, “No one will be able to steal our hope.”

Yet when the first day is over, there are empty desks left behind, gently serving as a reminder of the families whose strength was not sufficient and for whom hope had to continue through the night.

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The Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, welcomed the UNGA resolution that encourages the use of the “Equal Earth cartographic projection” in maps globally to replace the widely used Mercator projection.

In a statement, the AU said adopting the resolution, sponsored by the West African country of Togo, marks an important step forward. According to reporting by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the Mercator projection.

Which was designed in the 16th century primarily for navigation, does not accurately reflect the relative surface areas of different regions of the world and significantly understates the true size of the African continent. “A map is never merely a map.

It reflects how the world is imagined,” noted the article, headlined, “Opinion: The map was wrong, but the perception problem is real,” by Xinhua and published on English.news.cn.

The UNGA measure passed 164 to 1, with the United States, not surprisingly, casting the only vote against it. Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine abstained, the UN reported.

“Every flat map lies because the Earth is a sphere and no projection can flatten it without distorting something: shape, area, distance or direction,” noted an article published on Al Jazeera.

“Gerardus Mercator, a cartographer and geographer who published the world map in 1569, chose to preserve angles and straight bearings, a trade-off that made sense for 16th-century ships but has kept shaping perceptions of the world for nearly 500 years since.

Equal Earth makes the opposite trade-off, preserving true area so continents can be compared honestly, at the cost of slightly bending their outlines,” according to aljazeera.com.

Equal Earth projection shows countries and continents in their true relative size. “Maps shape our understanding of the world,” Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said, reported UN News.

“A fair map does not change the geography of the world; it changes how we see the world,” he said, adding, “And when our perspective becomes more just, it paves the way for greater understanding, respect and peace among nations.”

In foreign affairs reporter Tim Marshall’s 2015 book, “Prisoners Of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics,” he writes, “The world’s idea of African geography is flawed.

Few people realize just how big (Africa) it is. He adds, “Africa is far, far longer than usually portrayed, which explains what an achievement it was (in past history) to round the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa).”

“Many Africans,” wrote Marshall, “are now partially the prisoners of the political geography the Europeans made … .”  He was referring to the divvying up of Africa by Europeans during the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference. The colonial powers drew artificial borders on paper, ignoring the region’s physical realities.

To show students how Europeans divided Africa, this writer once stood in front of my son Equiano’s sixth-grade class in Philadelphia. Armed only with a magic marker, I drew “artificial borders” on a map of Africa, devoid of its current nation-states. I projected it from the internet onto an erasable board.

According to the documentary “Scramble for Africa,” the 1885 Act of Berlin did the same thing—carve up Africa by simply drawing lines on a map. “Places where they had not even been yet. Between 6,000 and 10,000 political units were carved up. People … were just cut off from (water sources) … it was complete geographical madness,” the film noted.

Marshall explains that after fighting for and achieving independence from their colonial rulers, many African states “encompassed the same divisions they did when first drawn, and those formal divisions are some of the many legacies colonialism bequeathed the continent.” 

He also explained that “modern civil wars (in Africa) are partially because the colonialists told different nations (a product of artificial borders) that they were one nation in one state, and then after the colonialists were chased out, a dominant people emerged within the state who wanted to run it all, thus ensuring violence.”  

As the side effects of some medication, the aftereffects of imposing artificial borders, explained Marshall, “can lead to a weak and divided state, ravaged by internal conflict, and whose mineral wealth condemns it to being exploited by outsiders.”

The UNGA vote matters even though the resolution is nonbinding; it does not ban the Mercator projection but, according to UN News, “simply encourages wider use of the Equal Earth projection.”

As the Iraqi-based news site Kurdistan24.net noted, “the significance of correcting the centuries old map inaccuracy lies less in declaring one map universally correct than in challenging the assumption that a navigational projection should remain the default representation of the world in classrooms, media and digital platforms.

The vote gives broad international support to an argument African governments and campaigners have increasingly advanced: maps do more than show geography.” Follow Jehron Muhammad @africawatchf

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British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said on Sept. 8 that France and Canada will join the UK in banning or limiting trade involving the illegal settlements. 

The three countries issued a joint statement with eight other governments on Sept. 8 warning that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory threaten the possibility of reaching a so-called two-state solution. 

In all, 11 countries have made commitments to imposing sanctions on Israel. 

Miliband told members of the British parliament that Israel has all too often “turned a blind eye” to “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank.” 

He said Britain will ban the import of goods from illegal settlements, while specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion will also come under new UK sanctions on the Israeli regime. 

Canada and France will follow suit, Miliband said, adding that the actions were in line with efforts by a “broad international coalition” seeking to pressure the Israeli regime over settlement expansions. 

France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a post on his X account that France will end trade with Israeli settlements. Paris, he said, “cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.” 

The planned sanctions have caused a major rift with Israel and its great benefactor, the United States. U.S. ambassador to the Israeli-occupied territories said on Sept. 8 that Washington could retaliate if the sanctions are approved.

Mike Huckabee suggested that individual U.S. states, specifically Florida, might take trade action against Britain. 

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar has also threatened London with counteraction. He said in a podcast interview with Israeli media outlet Ynet that the sanctions “will be making a big mistake” and that the Israeli regime has tools to retaliate against the policy. (PressTV.co.uk)

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The recent resumption of U.S. airstrikes in Iran, including on a wedding party where at least 25 civilians were killed last week (Sept. 1), made Amnesty International’s Sept. 8 report on previous suspected U.S.-Israeli attacks in Tehran in the early days of the war all the more urgent, said the organization as it pointed to new evidence of potential war crimes by the American and Israeli militaries in the densely populated Iranian capital.

Amnesty analyzed U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on three residential neighborhoods—Resalat, Niloufar, and Javadieh—between March 1-13, in which the coalition used “explosive weapons with wide-area effects,” killing at least 41 civilians and damaging multiple homes, a school, businesses, and other civilian infrastructure.

“Amid the resumption of U.S. strikes in Iran and renewed threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to target civilian infrastructure, it is imperative that the U.S. and Israel end all unlawful attacks and strictly comply with international humanitarian law.

Including by taking all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects during the planning and execution of military operations,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.

The group noted that military infrastructure and police stations—which could be considered legitimate military targets in Iran, as the police forces are part of the broader armed forces there—were struck in the attacks in question.

Israel and the U.S. have not publicly claimed responsibility for the three specific attacks, but they announced strikes against Iranian “regime” targets in Tehran at the time of the airstrikes.

Amnesty emphasized that even if military and police buildings were the primary targets, “a large presence of civilians was clearly foreseeable” when the U.S. and Israel evidently carried out the attacks in the three neighborhoods, which “resulted in devastating and yet entirely predictable consequences for civilians.”

International law demands that warring parties do not carry out “indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks” that could harm civilians across the surrounding area, said the group.

Military leaders, said Amnesty, are also obligated to “choose weapon types and attack methods that reduce the risk of harming civilians and destroying civilian objects.”

“The use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in the vicinity of concentrations of civilians has foreseeably indiscriminate effects and as such is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” the group stated.

“Additionally, an attacking party remains at all times bound by the principle of proportionality, weighing the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from an attack against the expected harm to civilians and civilian objects, including the reverberating humanitarian consequences resulting from the attack.”

“Launching indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians and disproportionate attacks are war crimes,” said Amnesty.

The group analyzed satellite imagery and verified 60 videos of the three attacks, as well as reviewing public statements from officials in the U.S., Israel, and Iran to reach the determination that U.S. and Israeli forces had potentially committed war crimes in the Tehran neighborhoods—a possibility the group said must be independently investigated.

In Niloufar, where at least 20 civilians were killed on March 1, eyewitness accounts described two explosions at around 9:00 p.m. local time, when restaurants and other businesses were open in the bustling neighborhood.

The attack directly struck a police station, but residential buildings and businesses were also struck.

A shop owner told Etemad Online that “before the attack … dozens of people were sitting in front of the cafés in the square. All the shops were open. … When the police station was struck, those who were sitting on the pavement in front of the cafés were killed.”

“The whole street was full of blood,” they added. “I saw one person whose chest had been pierced by broken glass. Many children, women, and young people were killed here that night.”

Callamard said that “the civilian death toll, the scale of destruction, the timing of the attacks, the impact on nearby civilian structures, and the lack of effective advance warnings point to alarming failures by the U.S.-Israeli coalition to abide by the obligations to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm and spare civilian objects.”

At least 16 people were killed in Resalat on March 9, in an attack that heavily damaged a building belonging to the Basij battalion of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as three buildings adjacent to the facility. Amnesty International confirmed that at least one of the buildings, known as Number 12, was a residence.

Twelve members of the same family were killed when Number 12 was struck, and an informed source identified as Payam told Amnesty that “there were no military people, no special individuals, no one connected to the government, no important person” in the building.

“Everyone living [in Number 12] was ordinary civilians,” he said. “The whole building was families.”

The husband of a 26-year-old woman who was killed in the attack told Etemad Online that the scene of the bombing was “so horrific that they will never leave my mind. Body parts were found separately. … A hand had been thrown to the entrance of the road or onto the roof of a house.”

The attack in Javadieh, a densely populated low-income neighborhood in Tehran, took place on March 13 and killed at least five civilians, with a police station on Ghorbani Street, a possible target.

“The destruction and damage extended well beyond the police station, and affected homes, businesses, and other civilian structures across the surrounding neighborhood,” said Amnesty. “State media reported that several nearby residential buildings were also destroyed and many others severely damaged.”

Videos verified by Amnesty show the impact of the blast extending up to more than 50 meters (164 feet) away from the police station. A restaurant, bakery, and motorcycle shop were all damaged, as well as a number of residential buildings.

Amnesty called on the U.S., Israel, and Iran to coordinate inquiries by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission regarding allegations of “serious violations of international humanitarian law by all parties.”

Tens of thousands of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have killed at least 1,469 civilians, including hundreds of children. Israel has also killed at least 4,333 people in Lebanon since early March, in retaliation for Hezbollah’s strikes in response to the assault on Iran. In retaliatory strikes across the region, Iran has killed at least 50 civilians, according to Amnesty.

“The U.S./Israeli strikes in Tehran investigated by Amnesty International may constitute indiscriminate attacks and amount to war crimes,” said Callamard. “They must be the object of independent, impartial, effective, and transparent investigations.”

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In a statement on Sept. 1, the Gaza-based resistance movement said the Israeli bombardment of the Katiba area, west of Gaza City, and the resulting loss of civilian lives constituted a grave offense and a willful disregard for the lives of civilians. It said the attacks were a continuation of the horrific genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

It added that the bloody onslaught has continued despite the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached in October 2025 in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The statement said the mounting violations of the ceasefire, continued systematic attacks on civilians, tightening of the siege, and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza demonstrate the defiant and arrogant policy pursued by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration in the face of mediation efforts. It said the policy also represents a blatant disregard for international law and humanitarian principles.

Hamas called on the U.S. administration, as well as Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye in their role as mediators, to take a clear position by condemning Israeli crimes against civilians and pressuring Israel to honor its commitments under the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

“We also urge the international community and global agencies, above all the UN Security Council, to take immediate measures to stop Israeli atrocities against civilians in Gaza, and to work to hold those responsible accountable before international judicial bodies,” the statement read.

In a separate statement on Sept. 1, Hamas said it had held talks with mediators and Nikolay Mladenov, Director-General of the Board of Peace, following the latest Israeli attacks.

During the phone calls, the group condemned “the latest criminal operation carried out by the Israeli occupation army in the Gaza Strip, as well as subsequent attacks and bombardment that resulted in the killing and injury of a number of Palestinians.”

Zaher al-Wahidi, Director of the Information Center at Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the bodies of three Palestinians killed Sept. 1 Israeli airstrikes, along with some of the wounded, were taken to al-Shifa Medical Complex. He said the dead included two children and a woman.

Local sources and eyewitnesses said Israeli drones carried out the strikes.

A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an armed group had arrived in the al-Katiba area before Israeli unmanned aircraft targeted civilian vehicles.

Palestinian media reported that an undercover Israeli special forces unit attempted an infiltration operation in the area, but was detected by the resistance and met with direct armed clashes.

Following the exposure and entrapment of the infiltration unit, the Israeli army launched intense strikes and a heavy fire belt consisting of over 10 airstrikes on the area to cover the withdrawal of the trapped force, killing and injuring civilians. 

Israeli authorities later alleged that they kidnapped a senior official in Hamas’s internal security apparatus in the operation. Hamas has not commented on that claim so far. 

Since the so-called ceasefire agreement took effect last October, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,320 Palestinians and wounded more than 4,385 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, according to the ministry.

(PressTV.co.uk)

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