US lawmakers push for sanctions against ANC officials
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has approved the US-SA Bilateral Relations Review Act.
It still has to be sent to the House and then Senate and be ratified by the President before it becomes law.
This may still take a while with the House in recess until September.
The bill also proposes sanctions on officials over alleged ties to adversaries like China, Russia, Iran and Hamas.
AfriForum is welcoming the passing of the bill, while the ANC says it will not compromise its principles.
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eNCA
22 minutes ago
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Of the 251 Israelis kidnapped that day, 49 are still held in Gaza, 27 of them declared dead by the Israeli military. The Israeli campaign has since killed 60,249 Palestinians, according to a tally from the Hamas government's health ministry, and this week UN aid agencies warned that deaths from starvation had begun. On Wednesday night, Gaza's civil defence agency said gunfire killed at least 58 people in a crowd gathered around a humanitarian aid convoy in the north of the territory. According to an AFP correspondent and witnesses, the trucks had entered Gaza through the Israeli military checkpoint at Zikim, on their way to World Central Kitchen and the World Food Programme warehouses in Gaza City. Thousands of people rushed to stop the trucks before they continued to the warehouses, and shooting erupted. Separately, the Hamas-led Gaza government's health ministry issued a statement Thursday begging Palestinians not to loot a new aid convoy, warning that it contained no food but instead medical supplies for the territory's hard-pressed hospitals. Another 32 people were reported killed by the civil defence agency on Thursday in Israeli attacks across Gaza. Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing many areas mean AFP cannot independently verify tolls and details provided by the civil defence and other parties.
TimesLIVE
11 hours ago
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US Senate rejects bids to block arms sales to Israel over Gaza
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eNCA
a day ago
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French govt prepares new law to return colonial-era art
France's government on Wednesday discussed a bill designed to speed up the return of artworks looted during the colonial era to their countries of origin, officials said. If approved, the law would make it easier for the country to return cultural goods in France's national collection "originating from states that, due to illicit appropriation, were deprived of them" between 1815 and 1972, said the culture ministry. It will cover works obtained through "theft, looting, transfer or donation obtained through coercion or violence, or from a person who was not entitled to dispose of them", the ministry added. The bill was presented during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, a government spokeswoman told reporters. The Senate is due to discuss it September. Former colonial powers in Europe have been slowly moving to send back some artworks obtained during their imperial conquests, but France is hindered by its current legislation. The return of every item in the national collection must be voted on individually. Wednesday's draft law is designed to simplify and streamline the process. France returned 26 formerly royal artefacts including a throne to Benin in 2021. They were part of the collection of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, which holds the majority of the 90,000 African works estimated to be in French museums, according to an expert report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2018. A "talking drum" that French colonial troops seized from the Ebrie tribe in 1916 was sent back to Ivory Coast earlier this year. In 2019, France's then prime minister Edouard Philippe handed over a sword to the Senegalese president that was believed to have belonged to the 19th-century West African Islamic scholar and leader, Omar Tall. Other European states, including Germany and the Netherlands, have handed back a limited number of artefacts in recent years Britain faces multiple high-profile claims but has refused to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece and the Kohinoor diamond to India, two of the best-known examples. The French draft law is the third and final part of legislative efforts to speed up the removal and return of artworks held in France's national collection.
