Recent outages highlight need for stronger African internet

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Nairobi, Kenya — Experts say Africa needs to invest in robust infrastructure if the continent is to have reliable internet after recent outages due to underwater cable failures highlighted the continent’s reliance on single-path connectivity.

Disruptions in March and May caused online banking problems and communication delays. Businesses experienced interruptions in many countries.

In March, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, four submarine cables that deliver the internet to at least 17 countries went offline.

Less than two months later, Eastern and Southern Africa experienced outages after two undersea cables were damaged. In Tanzania, the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam closed for two days due to the disruption.

Ben Gumo, a Kenyan who relies on the internet to sell clothes, shoes and children’s wares, said he lost business during the May disruption.

“Someone … puts stuff in the [online] basket, but because of the outage he cannot complete the sale, so he cancels,” Gumo said, adding that he couldn’t update his website with new products.

According to the telecommunications research company Telegeography, over 100 cable cuts occur globally each year. Experts blame undersea volcanic activity, rock falls, recent rainfall and currents in rivers that are much stronger than when some of the cables were built.

Manmade activities also cause disruptions. According to one report, a ship was attacked in the Red Sea and drifted, its anchor pulling up three underwater cables.

Mike Last works with the West Indian Ocean Cable Company, which operates in 20 African countries and has built 36 data centers. He said recent disruptions prompted government officials and businesspeople to recognize the need for better internet infrastructure.

“What it made people realize is that you have to invest in a reliable network, you have to invest in redundancy,” Last said, meaning that internet service is provided by more than one source. “We’ve seen a real boom in clients coming to us wanting connectivity on the new subsea systems.”

Some countries can stay online when one internet source is cut off, although service is often slow and not stable, because service providers and telecommunication carriers invested in more than one international connection.

According to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa’s digital infrastructure coverage, access and quality are far behind those of other regions.

However, Africa is embracing the digital future. According to the Submarine Cable Networks, 37 countries have at least one subsea cable connection, and 20 countries have more than two subsea cables.

Last said cables planned by Google and Meta will improve connectivity.

One of the new cables, he said, has a high capacity. Another new cable — named 2Africa and led by Meta, the parent company of Facebook — is being built all the way around Africa.

“It brings a lot of capacity to Africa, and that will help,” Last said.

Experts warn that disparities in connectivity across Africa are expected, but that the development of infrastructure, government policies and private sector investments can accelerate growth.
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Actor Bob Newhart, famous for deadpan humor, dies at 94

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LOS ANGELES — Bob Newhart, who fled the tedium of an accounting job to become a master of stammering, deadpan humor as a standup comedian and later as a U.S. television sitcom star, died on Thursday at the age of 94, his publicist said.

Newhart died at his home in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses, said his longtime publicist, Jerry Digney.

Newhart had two hit shows — first playing a psychologist on “The Bob Newhart Show” from 1972 to 1978, and then portraying a Vermont innkeeper on “Newhart” from 1982 through 1990. In both shows he relied on a bland, cardigan-clad everyman character who is confounded by the oddball people around him.

Newhart was nominated for Emmy Awards nine times, beginning in 1962 for writing on his short-lived variety show, but he did not win until 2013 when he was given the award for a guest appearance on “The Big Bang Theory.”

Newhart’s career began in the late 1950s, with a comedy routine in which he played straight man to an unheard voice on the other end of a telephone call. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers duo called Newhart “a one-man comedy team” because of his dialogues with invisible partners.

His 1960 live album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” was a big hit that was also highly influential. It became the first comedy album to top the charts and earned him three Grammy awards.

Newhart’s characters had a trademark stammer, which he said was not an act but the way he really talked. He said a TV producer once asked him to cut down on the stammer because it was making the shows run too long.

“‘No,’ I told him. ‘That stammer bought me a house in Beverly Hills,'” Newhart wrote in his memoir, “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!”

He ended his “Newhart” show in 1990 with an episode regarded as one of the most unique in the annals of U.S. television. In the last scene of the series, he awakens in bed with his wife from the first series after “dreaming” his life in the second series.

Newhart sprung from an era of angry, edgy standup comics such as Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman and Mort Sahl, but his act was subtly subversive, without the profanity or shock used by his contemporaries.

He exploited his hesitant, bashful ordinariness to skewer society in his own fashion — including sketches about how a publicity agent would “handle” Abraham Lincoln or one featuring an inept official on the phone with a frantic man trying to defuse a bomb.

In the late 1950s, Newhart had a boring accounting job — in which he claimed that his credo was “that’s close enough” — and began writing comedy sketches with a colleague as a diversion.

Those led to radio performances and eventually a record deal with Warner Bros.

“Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe, at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, ‘You really aren’t cut out for accounting,'” Newhart told an interviewer.

Before winning an Emmy in 2013, Newhart had been nominated three times for his acting on “Newhart,” once for writing on his 1961 variety show and twice for appearances on other shows. He also was a frequent guest on variety shows and talk shows.

He appeared in several movies, including “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” “Catch-22” and “Elf.”

In 2002, he was awarded the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Asked by the New York Times in 2019 whether he felt 90 years old, Newhart said, “My mind doesn’t. I can’t turn it off.”

Newhart was introduced by comedian Buddy Hackett to his future wife, Virginia, whom he married in 1964. The Newharts had four children.
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US appeals court blocks remainder of Biden’s student debt plan

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WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court blocked the implementation of the Biden administration’s student debt relief plan, which would have lowered monthly payments for millions of borrowers.

In a ruling Thursday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a motion for an administrative stay filed by a group of Republican-led states seeking to invalidate the administration’s entire student loan forgiveness program. The court’s order prohibits the administration from implementing the parts of the SAVE plan that were not already blocked by lower court rulings.

The ruling comes the same day that the Biden administration announced another round of student loan forgiveness, this time totaling $1.2 billion in forgiveness for roughly 35,000 borrowers who are eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

The PSLF program, which provides relief for teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public servants who make 120 qualifying monthly payments, was originally passed in 2007. But for years, borrowers ran into strict rules and servicer errors that prevented them from having their debt canceled. The Biden administration adjusted some of the program’s rules and retroactively gave many borrowers credits toward their required payments.

Two separate legal challenges to Biden’s SAVE plan have worked their way through the courts.

In June, federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan to provide a faster path toward loan cancellation and reduce monthly income-based repayment from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. Those injunctions did not affect debt that had already been forgiven.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with the lowered monthly payments. Thursday’s order from the 8th circuit blocks all aspects of the SAVE plan.

The Education Department said it was reviewing the ruling.

“Our Administration will continue to aggressively defend the SAVE Plan — which has been helping over 8 million borrowers access lower monthly payments, including 4.5 million borrowers who have had a zero-dollar payment each month,” the administration said.
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New US sanctions target Houthi financial network

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WASHINGTON — The United States issued Yemen-related counterterrorism sanctions on Thursday targeting individuals and entities linked to Houthi financial facilitator Sa’id al-Jamal.

The Treasury Department said the actions affected a dozen people and vessels, including Indonesia-based Malaysian and Singaporean national Mohammad Roslan Bin Ahmad and China-based Chinese national Zhuang Liang, “who have facilitated illicit shipments and engaged in money laundering for the network.”
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US says China’s halt of arms-control talks undermines strategic stability

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State Department — The United States called China’s decision to suspend nascent arms-control talks with Washington “unfortunate,” noting that China has opted not to engage in efforts to manage strategic risks and prevent costly arms races.

“We think this approach undermines strategic stability. It increases the risk of arms race dynamics. We have made efforts to bolster the defense of our allies and partners in the Indo Pacific, and we will continue to make those efforts in the face of Chinese threats to their security,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a briefing on Wednesday.

The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that Beijing has decided to hold off on discussions with the U.S. regarding a new round of consultations on arms control and non-proliferation. 

This decision is a protest against Washington’s arms sales to Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.

“China has chosen to follow Russia’s lead in asserting that engagement on arms control can’t proceed when there are other challenges in the bilateral relationship,” Miller added.

On November 6, 2023, officials from the U.S. and China convened for a new strategic risk reduction discussion at the State Department. 

Leading the U.S. delegation was Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability (ADS). The Chinese delegation was headed by Sun Xiaobo, director general for arms control at China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with other civilian officials also in attendance.

The U.S. has proposed three measures to China aimed at reducing strategic risks related to missile launches or potential missile launches. These include establishing a strategic crisis hotline between their respective Strategic Commands, implementing space deconfliction measures, and adopting missile launch notifications, a practice observed by China with Russia.

China’s decision to halt the new round of strategic risk reduction talks was described as not a significant loss to the U.S., as Chinese officials did not propose any initiatives during the November discussions, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source also noted that similar talks between the U.S. and China under previous administrations had yielded no tangible results.

“China stands ready to maintain communication with the U.S. on international arms control issues in line with the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian on Wednesday. 

“But the U.S. must respect China’s core interests and create necessary conditions for dialogue and exchange,” he said.

Some former U.S. intelligence officials doubt the effectiveness of ongoing government-to-government engagements and exchanges. They argue that Beijing’s recent suspension of risk reduction talks in response to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan serves as a convenient pretext for China to persist with its internal nuclear arms buildup and external proliferation.

James Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, commented that “talks can and will be held when the Chinese Communist Party changes its nefarious actions and destabilizing behavior.”

In a report mandated by Congress last October, the Pentagon revealed that China was developing its nuclear arsenal more quickly than the U.S. had previously estimated.

As of May 2023, China had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads, with projections indicating they could exceed 1,000 by 2030.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States currently has about 3,700 nuclear warheads, fewer than Russia’s estimated 4,500.

The U.S. switched its diplomatic recognition from the government in Taipei to the government in Beijing in 1979.

Since then, the U.S. policy has maintained that differences between the two sides should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the will of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The United States acknowledges but has never endorsed Beijing’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan.

Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse.
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Trump vice presidential nominee takes center stage at Republican Party convention

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Republican Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance took center stage at the third night of the Republican National Convention Wednesday. Donald Trump’s running mate embraced an “America First” approach to foreign policy and security. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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