Sunday 7, April ,2024 {HMC} When Morocco ‘s King Mohamed VI visited Havana in 2017, Cuban-American gallery owner Alberto Magnan impressed him with a “full immersion” in the Caribbean island’s art and culture, drawing a line between the cultural and historical themes tackled by Cuban artists and those from across Africa.

Seven years after that encounter, one of the first exhibitions of Cuban art at an African museum is showing at Morocco’s Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

It’s part of an effort to give visitors a view beyond the European artists who often remain part of the school curriculum in the North African nation and other former French colonies, museum director Abdelaziz El Idrissi said.

“The Moroccan public might know Giacometti, Picasso or impressionists,” El Idrissi said. The museum has shown them all. “We’ve seen them and are looking for other things, too.”

The Cuba show contains 44 pieces by Wifredo Lam — a major showing of the Afro-Cuban painter’s work more than a year before New York City’s Museum of Modern Art will honor him with a career retrospective show in 2025.

“We’re kind of beating MoMA to the punch,” Magnan said.

The Morocco show also marks the first time that the work of another luminary, Jose Angel Toirac, is being displayed outside Cuba. Previously, his paintings depicting the country’s late anti-capitalist president Fidel Castro in the iconography of American advertisements and consumer culture were not allowed off the island.

Other works in Cuban Art: On the other side of the Atlantic — open until June 16 — show prevalent themes in Cuban art ranging from isolation and economic embargo to heritage and identity.

In Cuba, almost half of the population identifies as mixed race and more than 1 million people are Afro-Cuban. The island’s diversity is a recurring subject for its painters and artists, including Lam. That’s why it was important to show his work — including paintings of African-inspired masks and use of vibrant color — in Africa, Magnan said.

Morocco is among countries that have shown new interest in Cuban art since the United States restored diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2014 and Castro died in 2016. American art dealers and major museums flocked to the previously difficult-to-visit island.

But the intrigue was curbed by the COVID-19 pandemic and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to redesignate the country as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” Magnan said.

Meanwhile, Morocco has increased funding for arts and culture in an effort to boost its “geopolitical soft power” in North Africa and beyond.

In both Morocco and Cuba, 20th century artists responded to political transition — decolonization in Morocco, revolution in Cuba — by drawing from history and engaging in trends shaping contemporary art worldwide.

But the current show does not touch on Moroccan-Cuban diplomatic relations, which were restored following King Mohamed VI’s 2017 visit to Cuba.

The countries had cut ties decades ago over Cuba’s position on the disputed Western Sahara, which Morocco claims. Cuba has historically trained Sahrawi soldiers and doctors and backed the Polisario Front’s agenda at the United Nations.

SOURCE VOA

Saturday 6, April ,2024 {HMC}  Warning that the war in Sudan risks triggering the world’s worst hunger crisis, the World Food Program said Friday that it finally has managed to bring desperately needed food aid into the war-wracked Darfur region for the first time in months.

The U.N. food agency said two convoys crossed the border from Chad into Darfur late last week, carrying food and nutrition assistance for about a quarter-million people in north, west and central Darfur.

It said the long-delayed mission was given the go-ahead following lengthy negotiations to reopen convoy routes after the Sudanese Armed Forces had revoked permission for humanitarian corridors from Chad in February.

“Cross-border operations from Chad to Darfur are critical to reach communities where children are already dying of malnutrition,” said Leni Kinzli, the WFP communications officer for Sudan.

Speaking in Nairobi, Kenya, she said that “All corridors to transport food must remain open, particularly the one from [the city of] Adre in Chad to West Darfur, where levels of hunger are alarming.”

While expressing relief that lengthy negotiations to reopen the routes have paid off, she warned that unless the people of Sudan receive a constant flow of aid through all possible humanitarian corridors, “the country’s hunger catastrophe will only worsen.”

Since the rival Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces plunged the country into war nearly one year ago, the United Nations says more than 8.5 million people have become displaced — 6.5 million within the country.

The WFP says 18 million people are facing acute hunger, 90% of them in hard-to-reach areas. A World Health Organization Public Health Situation Analysis of the Sudan conflict finds a record 24.8 million people — almost every other person — need urgent humanitarian assistance in 2024.

“This is 9 million more than in 2023. So, how catastrophic is that,” said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson.

“People have been forced to flee their homes due to the humanitarian situation and the destruction of essential infrastructure, such as roads, hospitals, medical facilities and schools.

“Also, power, water, communication services, everything — all the infrastructure you need to lead a normal life” has been destroyed, she said.

The WHO says at least 14,600 people have been killed and 33,000 injured. It says two-thirds of the population lack access to medical care, noting that disease outbreaks, including cholera, measles, malaria, poliovirus type 2 and dengue, are increasing.

“Food insecurity is also at a record high, with nearly half of children acutely malnourished,” said the WHO, underscoring that “urgent action is needed to prevent further catastrophe.”

The WFP’s Kinzli said it was critical that aid be quickly and easily delivered to needy people in Darfur through the Tine border crossing or across conflict lines from within Sudan.

She said, however, that “fierce fighting, lack of security and lengthy clearances by the warring parties” have led to delays in the distribution of assistance. She noted it was impossible for aid workers to provide help “to people trapped in Sudan’s conflict hotspots.”

The “WFP needs aid to be consistently reaching war-ravaged communities through every possible route,” Kinzli said, warning that hunger in Sudan will increase as the lean season starts — the period of the year when food stocks are at their lowest.

“Our greatest fear is that we will see unprecedented levels of starvation and malnutrition sweep across Sudan this lean season, and that the Darfur region will be particularly hard hit.”

She pointed out that crop production is at an all-time low because the fighting is preventing farmers from harvesting their crops.

“Recent crop reports show that the harvest for cereals in Darfur this year was 78% below the five-year average,” she said. “That is why WFP is deeply concerned about how serious the hunger crisis will get this lean season.”

Kinzli expressed deep concern that the lean season, which normally runs from May to September, could begin as early as next week and last much longer than usual.

SOURCE VOA

Saturday 6, April ,2024 {HMC} American and Israeli negotiators were expected in Cairo over the weekend for a renewed push to reach a cease-fire-hostage deal in a war that has raged for nearly half a year.

Ahead of the talks, U.S. President Joe Biden wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar urging them to dial up pressure on Hamas to “agree to and abide by a deal,” a senior administration official told AFP on Friday night.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have engaged for months in behind-the-scenes talks to broker a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners but have made no headway since a weeklong truce in November.

The White House confirmed that negotiations would occur this weekend in Cairo but would not comment on U.S. media reports that CIA Director Bill Burns would be attending, along with Israel spy chief David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel.

Israel and Hamas, which negotiate through intermediaries, have traded blame for the lack of progress.

“This basic fact remains true: There would be a cease-fire in Gaza today had Hamas simply agreed to release this vulnerable category of hostages — the sick, wounded, elderly and young women,” the senior Biden administration official said.

Hamas officials and Qatari mediator al-Thani have previously accused Israel of stymying the truce with objections over the return of displaced Gazan civilians and the ratio of prisoners to hostages.

During a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden pushed him to “fully empower” his negotiators to reach a deal.

A staunch backer of Israel, Biden’s patience with the immense toll inflicted by the war on Gaza appears to be waning, especially after the killing of seven aid workers.

With both international and domestic outrage mounting, Biden has warned of a reassessment of U.S. support if more is not done to protect civilians.

Allies have been pressing Biden to leverage the billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel.

More than three dozen U.S. lawmakers on Friday signed a letter to Biden urging him to reconsider the “recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed,” referring to the drone strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers Monday.

‘Inhumane ferocity’

The Israeli army, known as the IDF, announced it was firing two officers after finding a series of “grave mistakes” led to the aid workers’ deaths.

It was a rare admission of wrongdoing by Israel in its campaign to root the militant group Hamas out of the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 33,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed.

In response to the IDF’s preliminary findings on the strike, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Saturday it was “not sufficient.”

World Central Kitchen said Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” noting that its staff was attacked despite having “followed all proper communications procedures.”

WCK said its operations in Gaza remain suspended after the attack, while top global aid groups said relief work has become almost impossible.

“In its speed, scale and inhumane ferocity, the war in Gaza is the deadliest of conflicts — for civilians, for aid workers, for journalists, for health workers and for our own colleagues,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a U.N. Security Council briefing on Friday.

At the same briefing, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan insisted the “only reason” aid fails to reach Gazan civilians “is because Hamas loots it and the U.N. is incapable of handling the capacity of supplies.”

Following the Biden-Netanyahu call, Israel said it would allow “temporary” deliveries through additional aid routes, without specifying when that would begin.

For the 2.4 million Gazans, simply procuring food and water in the relentlessly bombarded strip has become a torturous struggle.

Since January, Palestinians in famine-threatened northern Gaza have eaten an average of just 245 calories per day — less than a can of beans — since January, according to Oxfam.

“Living in tents is difficult, everything is hard. Securing water and food is difficult,” said Gazan Siham Ashour, who, like more than 1 million others, has been displaced to the sprawling encampment in the strip’s southernmost city, Rafah.

Wider conflict

The war has also consumed much of the wider region, with hostilities between Israel and Iran and its proxies triggering fears of a broader conflict.

In Iran, thousands of people chanted “Death to Israel” at a funeral in Tehran on Friday that coincided with annual commemorations in support of Palestinians.

Iran has blamed Israel for a strike on its consulate in Damascus that killed seven Revolutionary Guards and has vowed retaliation.

Hezbollah said Friday that three of its fighters had been killed in exchanges with Israel. Its ally Amal said it had also lost three fighters to an airstrike in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army said in a communique that it had bombed a “military complex” used by Amal and targeted several regions of southern Lebanon.

The war in Gaza began with Tehran-backed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Palestinian militants also took around 250 hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.

Tehran has denied any direct involvement in the attack.

SOURCE VOA

Saturday April 6, 2024

Somalia on Thursday closed two of the Ethiopian consulates in the country’s northern region and ordered the Ethiopian ambassador to leave the country, escalating diplomatic rifts between the two sides.

MOGADISHU (Xinhua) — Somalia on Thursday closed two of the Ethiopian consulates in the country’s northern region and ordered the Ethiopian ambassador to leave the country, escalating diplomatic rifts between the two sides.

The Cabinet which met in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, said the two consulates in Garowe in Puntland State and Hargeisa in Somaliland State must be closed within a week.

“Diplomats and employees of the Ethiopian government working in the two consulates in the cities mentioned must leave the country within a week,” the Cabinet said in a statement issued after the meeting.

The statement warned of further consequences for any Ethiopian diplomats who fail to comply with the directive, emphasizing that such actions would be seen as a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty. It also instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to officially inform the Ethiopian ambassador to Somalia to return to his country for consultation.

This development follows a meeting between the Ethiopian foreign minister and Puntland’s finance minister Wednesday in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, which Mogadishu claims was not coordinated with or approved by the Somali government.

Tensions between Somalia and Ethiopia have been exacerbated by a recent agreement between Ethiopia and the Somaliland State of Somalia. The agreement, signed on Jan. 1, grants landlocked Ethiopia access rights to the Red Sea port of Berbera, a move that Somalia views as a violation of its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Under the terms of the agreement, Ethiopia will be able to establish commercial marine operations at the port and will have access to a leased military base on the Red Sea. In exchange, Ethiopia has agreed to recognize Somaliland as an independent nation, which has not been internationally recognized, and provide a share of state-owned Ethiopian Airlines to Somaliland.