Month: July 2022

Nature Hear-Through: All-new Hisense U5120G Soundbar Launches in South Africa

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 4, 2022

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — World-renowned electronics manufacturer, Hisense, has recently announced the launch of the newest generation of U5120G Soundbar in South Africa. Available from June 29th at Takealot, Tafelburg, HiFi Corp, and Hirsch’s, the powerful and easy-to-use U5120G Soundbar will retail for R7999 and is expected to be a popular addition to at-home entertainment systems, providing a theatre-like experience for consumers.

The innovative U5120G Soundbar comes with 11 in-built multi-directional speakers and a 180-watt wireless subwoofer for a total of 510 watts of high-quality audio. The 8-inch subwoofer can process sounds as low as 40Hz, adding deep and powerful bass effects to movies, TV shows, games, and music. The devices feature easy connectivity and are Bluetooth compatible, meaning setup is clean, easy, and painless.

As to audio experience, speaker positioning inside the U5120G Soundbar creates a surround system with real 5.1.2ch sound. A user remarked that, unlike traditional surround sound systems, which have one “sweet spot” seat for the best surround effects, with an intuitive DTS Virtual:X feature and Dolby Atmos, the U5120G Soundbar provides them with an immersive 360-degree surround sound that is warm and heartfelt at any seating position in their TV room.

The U5120G Soundbar can process high-resolution audio, giving sound quality comparable to that of recording studios and concert halls. Its Hi-Remaster technology enables it to upscale the sound quality of other input sources such as CDs and MP3s. Many users praised this feature, claiming that it amplified the compressed audio into an expanded, warmer and richer audio signal that adds depth and dimension to music or movies. For higher-end audio requirements such as movies and games, the U5120G Soundbar also supports 4k and 3D, processing data without quality loss and greatly improving the overall entertainment experience.

According to user feedback, the U5120G Soundbar is easily wall-mountable. It is also easy to set up, with a single remote that supports EzPlay and intuitive menus for customization and switching between different audio modes. If users do not wish to change audio modes manually, the AI EQ mode supported by Hi-AT technology offers sound optimization for each scene. Whether watching sports, a movie, or the news, listening to music or playing a game, AI EQ mode can detect and adjust to the best sound experience.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1852729/U520G.jpg

Government Politics

Guinea Bissau president elected as new chairman of Economic Community of West African States

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 4, 2022

ACCRA— The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Sunday elected Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo, the president of Guinea Bissau, as its new chairman.

Embalo was elected during the 61st Ordinary Session of the Authority of ECOWAS Heads of State and Government in Accra, the Ghanaian capital. He will replace Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Ghanaian president, who had been the chairman since September 2020.

“In a unanimous election, the authority of heads of state of ECOWAS elected Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo, president of Guinea Bissau, as the new chairman,” announced Akufo-Addo.

In his acceptance speech, Embalo promised to lead the subregional bloc to restore peace and stability to the subregion.

“Despite the challenges that we are faced with as a result of violent extremism and the current global crisis, I believe, the solidarity within ECOWAS will enable us to overcome these challenges,” said Embalo.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Government

Congo and Rwanda to Meet for Talks Amid Tensions Over Rebels

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 4, 2022

Sudan's leading general said Monday the country's military will withdraw from negotiations meant to solve the ongoing political crisis after a coup last year, allowing civil society representatives to take their place.

In televised statements aired on Sudan's state television, General Abdel-Fattah Burhan also promised that he would dissolve the sovereign council that he leads after a new transitional government is formed. The council has governed the country since the military took power in a coup last year.

Since the coup, the U.N. political mission in Sudan, the African Union and the eight-nation east African regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development have been trying to broker a way out of the political impasse. But talks have yielded no results so far. Pro-democracy groups have repeatedly said they will not negotiate with the military, and they have called for it to immediately hand the reins to a civilian government.

Burhan did not specify any dates or who would replace the military at the negotiating table. After the ruling council is dissolved, he said, the army and the powerful paramilitary known as the Rapid Support Forces will be placed under a new governing body responsible for the country's defense and security.

Sudan has been plunged into turmoil since the military takeover upended its short-lived transition to democracy after three decades of repressive rule by former strongman Omar al-Bashir. The military removed al-Bashir and his Islamist-backed government in a popular uprising in April 2019.

Burhan's statements come after a deadly week for the country's pro-democracy protesters. On Thursday, nine people were killed and at least 629 injured by security forces in anti-military demonstrations, according to the Sudan's Doctors Committee, which has tracked protest casualties.

Sudanese military authorities have met the near-weekly street protests since the coup with a crackdown that has so far killed 113 people, including 18 children.

Western governments have repeatedly called on the generals to allow peaceful protests but have also angered the pro-democracy movement for engaging with the leading generals.

Source: Voice of America

Business Market

Central African Republic President: Crypto is key to financial inclusion

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 4, 2022

BANJUI— Cryptocurrencies are the solution to tackling financial exclusion in the Central African Republic, its President Faustin-Archange Touadera said, citing the cost of opening bank accounts.

“The alternative to cash is cryptocurrency,” Touadera said at a launch event for crypto initiative Sango hosted by the country, after it became the first African state to make bitcoin legal tender in April. “For us, the formal economy is no longer an option.”

The move to adopt cryptocurrencies in a country where internet use is low and electricity unreliable has raised eyebrows among crypto experts, puzzled lawmakers and residents, and drawn words of caution from the International Monetary Fund.

The Sango project, including a Sango Coin, was backed by the Central African Republic’s National Assembly and spearheaded by Touadera, who said the token would provide access to the country’s “mountain” of natural resources, including gold and diamonds.

The country’s “Sango” website says that it will “facilitate the tokenisation of Central African Republic’s resources for worldwide investors”.

“Sango Coin will be the currency of the new generation of the Central African Republic,” Touadera said, without providing specifics.

The Central African Republic’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies does not seem to have been dented by recent losses in their values, with the price of bitcoin falling over 58 per cent in the past three months, according to Refinitiv data.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

General

Multiple Crises Threatening Stability and Development in Sahel

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 3, 2022

The World Food Program warns conflict, climate change, COVID-19, and skyrocketing prices of food, fuel, and fertilizer are further threatening stability and development prospects in Africa’s Sahel region.

WFP warns a wave of hunger and suffering is sweeping across part of the Sahel, driving people to the brink of desperation and upending years of development gains.

The agency reports 12.7 million people are acutely hungry, including 1.4 million on the verge of starvation. It says 6 million children are acutely malnourished, making them vulnerable to disease and even death if they do not receive treatment for their condition.

Alexandre Le Cuziat is WFP senior emergency preparedness and response adviser for West Africa. Speaking from Dakar in Senegal, he warns the number of people suffering from acute hunger and the number of malnourished children is likely to rise during the current lean season when food stocks are at their lowest.

“What we see is that acute hunger is driven primarily by conflict that will continue to trigger massive population displacements and the violence is often preventing people from accessing markets, fields, or humanitarian assistance. The region also bears the consequences of a climatic shock with very, very poor rains in 2021, one of the worst in the last 40 years,” he said.

Le Cuziat says the conflict in Ukraine has driven up food and energy prices. He adds it also has led to shortages of fertilizer needed for the planting season, which is now over.

He notes less than half of the region’s fertilizer needs have been met. This, he says, could result in a 20% drop in agricultural production in the region this year, further increasing the levels of hunger.

He says needs in the region are at record highs at a time when resources to respond to emergencies are dwindling. He says a lack of money is forcing WFP to reduce the number of people receiving assistance and to cut rations for the remaining beneficiaries.

“Even before the conflict in Ukraine drove up the global prices of food, fuel, and fertilizer, we were forced to cut rations by up to 50% in all of the Sahelian countries, as well as Nigeria, CAR. And our emergency nutrition programs are also underfunded, which combined to the cuts I was mentioning on our operations is going to put a lot of stress on what little resources the poorest families have left,” he said.

Le Cuziat says WFP requires $329 million in the next six months for its life saving operation and to prevent the Sahel from becoming, what he calls, an all-out humanitarian catastrophe.

Source: Voice of America

Government Politics

Spain, Mali FMs speak after row over NATO remarks

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 3, 2022

BAMAKO— Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said he had spoken with his Spanish counterpart after a row over comments the Spaniard made about the possibility of a NATO operation in the African

country.

Diop wrote in a tweet that he had spoken by phone with his Spanish counterpart Jose Manuel Albares about the comments, which were made in a radio interview.

“He denied the remarks and expressed his attachment to friendly relations and cooperation with Mali,” wrote Diop.

Spain moved to calm the row Saturday, a day after a day the military regime in Bamako had summoned their ambassador for an explanation.

“Spain did not ask during the NATO summit or at any other time for an intervention, mission or any action by the Alliance in Mali,” said a statement from Spain’s embassy.

The row blew up over remarks by Albares in an interview Thursday with Spain’s RNE radio.

Asked if a NATO mission in Mali could be ruled out, Albares said: “No, we can’t rule it out.

“It hasn’t been on the table at the talks in Madrid because this is a summit that is laying out, so to speak, the framework for NATO action.

“If it were necessary and if there was to be a threat to our security, of course it would be done,” he added.

Albares was speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit as it drew to a close in Madrid.

Diop had told state broadcaster ORTM on Friday that Bamako had summoned the Spanish ambassador to lodge a strong protest over the remarks.

“These remarks are unacceptable, unfriendly, serious,” said Diop, because “they tend to encourage an aggression against an independent and sovereign country”.

“We have asked for explanations, a clarification of this position from the Spanish government,” he added.

At the Madrid summit, Spain pushed hard to prioritise the topic of the threat to NATO’s southern flank caused by the unrest in the Sahel — the vast territory stretching across the south of Africa’s Sahara Desert, incorporating countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Jihadist attacks there are pushing increasing numbers of people to flee north towards Europe, with Spain one of the main points of entry there.

At the summit, NATO acknowledged the alliance’s strategic interest in the Middle East, north Africa and the Sahel.

Mali has since 2012 been rocked by jihadist insurgencies. Violence began in the north and then spread to the centre and to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Government

West African Summit; Coup-hit Neighbors on Agenda

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 3, 2022

West African leaders attended a summit Sunday as their regional bloc pursues its efforts to resolve the political impasse in the coup-hit nations of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.

A summit last month of the Economic Community of West African States put off imposing further economic and financial sanctions on the three nations. They were suspended from the bloc following military coups and are under international pressure to hold democratic elections.

Malian authorities recently announced a transition roadmap that includes scheduling a presidential election for February 2024 and a March 2023 constitutional referendum.

It remains to be seen if participants at Sunday’s summit in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, will accept the proposal.

ECOWAS sanctioned Mali in January by shutting down most commerce with the country, along with its land and air borders with other countries in the bloc. The measures have crippled Mali’s economy.

The juntas in Guinea and Burkina Faso have proposed three-year transition periods, which ECOWAS rejected as too long a wait for elections.

The wave of military coups began in August 2020, when Col. Assimi Goita and other soldiers overthrew Mali’s democratically elected president. Nine months later, he carried out a second coup, dismissing the country’s civilian transitional leader and assuming the presidency himself.

Mutinous soldiers deposed Guinea’s president in September 2021, and Burkina Faso’s leader was ousted in a January coup.

The political upheaval came as many observers started to think that military power grabs were a thing of the past in West Africa.

Source: Voice of America

Africa Press Releases South Africa

Aucun fruit ne devrait être défendu : Dole Sunshine Company exhorte Sa Sainteté à redorer le blason de la pomme

Post author By lbadmin
Post date July 2, 2022

Cette lettre amusante vise à transformer la pomme du péché originel en collation originelle et à attirer l’attention sur l’importance d’une bonne alimentation pour tous

SINGAPOUR, 1er juillet 2022 /PRNewswire/ — La calamité du péché originel (et le rôle qu’y a joué la pomme) est indéniablement le désastre de relations publiques le plus catastrophique auquel les fruits aient jamais été confrontés. Aujourd’hui, en l’honneur de la journée internationale des fruits, Dole Sunshine Company a publié une lettre ouverte à Sa Sainteté le pape François, dans La Repubblica, pour demander l’absolution pour la pomme. DSC demande de redorer la réputation des fruits et de les célébrer en tant qu’en-cas originels « sains ».

Pendant des milliers d’années, la pomme a subi cette diffamation après qu’Ève ait croqué une bouchée du « fruit défendu » dans le jardin d’Eden. D’une manière amusante, mais qui, espérons-le, portera ses fruits, DSC cherche à inverser cette diffamation et demande au pape François d’absoudre le fruit de son rôle erroné dans le péché originel. La lettre, un plaidoyer humoristique et sans précédent adressé au souverain pontife, vise à susciter un dialogue mondial sur l’importance des fruits dans un régime alimentaire nutritif et à mettre l’accent sur les avantages des fruits et leur accessibilité globale.

« Nous avons conscience que demander ce changement est une demande audacieuse et provocatrice, et nous ne voulons bien sûr pas manquer de respect à Sa Sainteté ou à l’Église », a déclaré Pier Luigi Sigismondi, président du groupe Dole Packaged Foods & Beverages. « Nous pensons que si nous parvenons à corriger cette représentation erronée du fruit, nous pourrons lancer un nouveau récit narratif mondial qui se concentrera sur ses bienfaits, et créera de nouvelles habitudes alimentaires plus saines, conformes à notre objectif qui est de favoriser une bonne nutrition pour tous. »

Publiée dans le seul journal que le pape François a déclaré lire, la lettre souligne respectueusement que, même si la pomme n’a jamais été explicitement nommée dans la Bible, ce fruit, en particulier, a fait l’objet de calomnies depuis qu’il a été associé à tort au péché originel. Et, dans un monde où il existe clairement des aliments plus mauvais et décadents, la pomme ne devrait plus être considérée comme le fruit défendu. DSC soutient plutôt que le fruit peut même être le héros de l’histoire et impulser un changement dans la conversation sur l’alimentation saine. Ainsi, il deviendrait un moteur pour une meilleure nutrition au niveau mondial.

DSC conclut sa lettre par cette demande humble, mais percutante, au pape François :

« Pour toutes ces raisons et bien plus encore, nous demandons humblement l’absolution que vous seul pouvez offrir. Un petit changement qui peut changer le monde. Envisageriez-vous de modifier la Bible ? Seulement un petit mot. Remplacer “fruit” par tout autre aliment malsain, par exemple ? C’est juste une idée. Si cette demande vous semble un peu trop ambitieuse, ne vous inquiétez pas. Nous comprenons. Peut-être qu’un message de soutien contribuerait grandement à restaurer la confiance du monde dans nos fruits bien-aimés. »

L’intégralité de la lettre, parue aujourd’hui dans le journal préféré du pape François, La Repubblica, peut être consultée sur DoleSunshine.com.

À propos de Dole Sunshine Company

Le nom Dole Sunshine Company est utilisé pour représenter les intérêts mondiaux et les efforts combinés de Dole Asia Holdings, Dole Worldwide Packaged Foods et Dole Asia Fresh. Dole Sunshine Company n’est pas une entité commerciale réelle et n’opère pas en tant que telle dans quelque pays ou région que ce soit. Pour en savoir plus sur Dole Sunshine Company, visitez DoleSunshine.com.

À propos de la promesse de Dole

En juin 2020, Dole Asia Holdings a annoncé la promesse de Dole, dont les trois piliers sont la nutrition, la durabilité et la création d’une valeur commune.

Faire mieux pour les personnes : Faire en sorte que 1 milliard de personnes aient accès à une alimentation durable d’ici 2025 et éliminer le sucre raffiné de tous les produits Dole Packaged Foods d’ici 2025.

Faire mieux pour la planète : Faire en sorte de ne gaspiller aucun fruit des exploitations Dole jusqu’aux marchés d’ici 2025 et supprimer les emballages de plastique fabriqués à partir de combustibles fossiles d’ici 2025. Nous visons aussi à ce que les activités de Dole atteignent la carboneutralité d’ici 2030.

Faire mieux pour tous les intervenants : Dole continuera d’avoir une influence positive sur l’ensemble des agriculteurs, des communautés et des personnes qui travaillent pour elle grâce à son engagement envers l’égalité salariale et des chances et en offrant un niveau toujours plus élevé de sécurité, de nutrition et de bien-être. L’entreprise cherche également à promouvoir les droits de l’homme dans le cadre de ses activités et au sein de ses chaînes d’approvisionnement en bâtissant une culture de transparence et de responsabilité. Dole a aussi pour objectif d’augmenter la valeur de son entreprise de 50 % d’ici 2025.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1851554/Dole_Unforbidden_Fruit.jpg

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/152677/dole_packaged_foods_logo.jpg