US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Oman and Saudi Arabia this month, as part of a broader diplomatic trip that will begin next Thursday.
Mr Pompeo will stop in Riyadh from February 19 to 21 to discuss regional and bilateral issues including Iran, Yemen and human rights with the Saudi leadership, the State Department said on Wednesday.
The Saudi Deputy Defence Minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, met Mr Pompeo in Washington last month to address escalation in the region after a US drone strike killed Iran’s most senior general, Qassem Suleimani, at the start of the year.
Mr Pompeo will then travel to Oman to express his condolences on the death of Sultan Qaboos and to meet Sultan Haitham to strengthen ties between the two countries.
Before his Middle East visit, Mr Pompeo will travel to Germany, Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia.
On Friday, February 14, he will arrive in Munich where he will speak at the Munich Security Conference and hold meetings with other world leaders.
Mr Pompeo will then travel to Dakar, Senegal from February 15 to 16, where he will meet President Macky Sall and Foreign Minister Amadou Ba to try to strengthen the security and economic partnership between the two nations.
The secretary will travel to Luanda, Angola, on February 17, where he will meet President Joao Lourenco and Foreign Minister Manuel Augusto to reaffirm US support for the country’s moves against corruption and towards democracy.
Mr Pompeo will also meet the business community to discuss the fight against corruption, and growing trade and investment opportunities.
Then, the secretary will travel to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from February 17 to 19.
There he will meet Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Sahle-Work Zewde to discuss regional security and to support the African country's political and economic reform agenda.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Film: In Syria
Dir: Philippe Van Leeuw
Starring: Hiam Abbass, Diamand Bo Abboud, Mohsen Abbas and Juliette Navis
Verdict: Four stars
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Retail gloom
Online grocer Ocado revealed retail sales fell 5.7 per cen in its first quarter as customers switched back to pre-pandemic shopping patterns.
It was a tough comparison from a year earlier, when the UK was in lockdown, but on a two-year basis its retail division, a joint venture with Marks&Spencer, rose 31.7 per cent over the quarter.
The group added that a 15 per cent drop in customer basket size offset an 11.6. per cent rise in the number of customer transactions.
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets