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Ghana government has cautioned the U.K. national carrier, British Airways (BA) over its poor service to and mistreatment of Ghanaian passengers.

The Aviation Minister, Cecilia Dapaah, told local journalists about instances that showed that nationals were being disrespected by substandard service from BA.

She addressed the airline’s admission that it had previously attempted to use a plane that was bug infested on the London to Accra route. The Minister added that officials of BA had been summoned to explain the issue.

We have been removed from terminal five to terminal three, some Ghanaians say they walk for about an hour before boarding on disembarkation also, Ghanaians are left at remote location.

In other complaints she said: “We have been removed from terminal five to terminal three, some Ghanaians say they walk for about an hour before boarding on disembarkation also, Ghanaians are left at remote location.”

Dapaah stressed that BA for over eight decades have benefited greatly on the route but she chastised the fact that the company has done little or nothing to benefit Ghanaians by way of corporate social responsibility.

She said a petition will soon be presented to demand reasons why Ghanaians have lower luggage weight as compared to Nigerians. Rickety planes and high fares were other areas she addressed.

BA has been operating in the country before Ghana’s independence in 1957, it is said to have operations dating as far back as 85 years ago. The airline has monopoly on direct flights between the U.K. and Ghana.

President Donald Trump launched at least 161 strikes in Yemen and Somalia during his first year in office, the Bureau’s latest figures show – more than triple the number carried out the year before.

This means there were over 100 times more strikes in Yemen and more than 30 times as many strikes in Somalia during President Trump’s first year in office than during his predecessor, Barack Obama’s.

Obama carried out a single strike in Yemen and one in Somalia during his first year as president. However, by the end of his two terms, Obama had embraced the US drone programme and carried out far more strikes than his predecessor President George W Bush. Strikes in Pakistan were in their hundreds, and yearly strike totals in Yemen and Somalia had reached double digits.

President Trump inherited the framework allowing US aircraft to hit suspected terrorists outside of declared battlefields from Obama. His administration has largely stuck within the framework set by the previous administration.

The vast majority of the 126 strikes that have hit Yemen since Trump’s inauguration followed reports in March 2017 of the Trump administration declaring parts of the country areas of “active hostilities”.

This effectively side-stepped measures introduced by Obama that meant strikes in areas of countries that were not active war-zones, such as Pakistan and Yemen, had to go through an elaborate sign-off process with the White House. In Yemen, 30 strikes hit within a month of the declaration being reported – nearly as many as the whole of 2016.

In Somalia, the Obama administration officially designated the al Shabaab group as an al Qaeda affiliate at the end of November 2016, essentially widening who could be targeted. In March, it was also reported that parts of Somalia had been declared areas of “active hostilities”, but there was no increase in strikes until July 2017, with 33 of the 35 strikes carried under President Trump taking place since then.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the number of weapons dropped is now approaching levels last seen during the 2009-2012 surge, despite combat operations officially ending in December 2014.

In November last year, US forces began hitting Taliban drugs labs in Helmand. General Nicholson, commander of US Forces – Afghanistan, said the strikes were carried out under new authorities provided under President Trump’s eagerly awaited South Asia strategy.

The Bureau counted five strikes confirmed in Pakistan during Trump’s first year in office. At least four air operations were also reported along the Afghan-Pakistan border in October and November, although it was unclear on what side of the border they fell.

At its height in 2010, the CIA drone programme hit 128 targets in Pakistan. Strikes fell with each passing year after that, falling to just three in 2016.

Uganda could begin enforcing the death penalty again, President Yoweri Museveni has said, 13 years after the country’s last execution.

Museveni said his “Christian background” had prevented him from going ahead with executions, but this “leniency” was encouraging criminals.

Human rights groups have warned against the move.

In Uganda, 28 offences merit the death penalty, the highest in east Africa. Some 278 people are on death row.

“I have not been assenting to hanging of convicts because of my Christian background but being lenient is causing people to think they can cause harm and get away with it,” President Yoweri Museveni wrote on Twitter.

He also said he would “hang a few” at a graduation ceremony for prison wardens in Kamapala on Thursday.

Rights groups were quick to criticise the president.
“Executing prisoners won’t end crime,” the executive director of Uganda’s Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, Livingstone Ssewanyana, told the Washington Post.

“The police are very weak with no capacity to investigate crimes extensively. As a result, you find serious failures in the systems.”

In recent years crime has risen, with 20 women murdered in four months in the capital Kampala last year. Some critics say police put more effort into targeting President Museveni’s opponents than into catching criminals.

However, other observers suggested Mr Museveni may not be serious about restarting executions.

Nicholas Opiyo of rights organisation Chapter Four told Reuters that Museveni’s tweet was “political talk” aimed at boosting his popularity.

The president, 73, angered some Ugandans earlier this year when he amended the country’s constitution so that he could run for re-election in 2021.

Originally, the constitution barred anyone over 75 from running for president. Museveni has governed Uganda since 1986.

Europe’s border watchdog says the number of migrants and asylum-seekers coming across the western Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year is likely to increase, after 2017 closed with more than twice the traffic of the previous year.

The head of the EU Frontex border agency, Fabrice Leggeri, announced Friday in Madrid that his agency would increase efforts this summer to help Spanish border surveillance. No extra funds have been allocated yet, but Frontex says it will consider diverting funds from operations in Greece or Italy if needed.

Leggeri said last year efforts to help Spain cost about 7 million euros ($8.6 million). Frontex said 22,880 migrants arrived in Spain last year by sea, up from 10,231 in 2016.

“The bad news is in the western Mediterranean,” Leggeri told reporters, noting that the number of migrants crossing the central and eastern Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe was higher but was declining. “Spain deserves more solidarity from the European Union.”

Leggeri also said a system in place in Italy and Greece to register those arriving will also be implemented in Spain. The system makes it easier to identify migrants so they can be repatriated if they are denied residency in Europe. It also allows European law-enforcement authorities to compare criminal records with other countries’ police agencies.

The International Organization for Migration says 2,583 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea this year through Wednesday, and 199 others died en route.

AFTER spending around seven years in an Indian prison, 41 Somali men returned to their country on Friday in a chartered flight from the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. Around 9.30am,

the men were brought to the airport’s Terminal 2 in Mumbai police’s vans from Yellow Gate police station in South Mumbai where they had been kept in “safe custody” since their release from Kolhapur jail on January 2 and January 12.

The ten-hour flight departed at 1.17pm for Somalia capital Mogadishu, over 3000 km from Mumbai. Advocate Vishwajeet Singh, representing the prisoners on behalf of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Somalia, said the men after completing formalities on their arrival in Mogadishu, will be sent home.

Standing in a queue at the airport, the men, keen to return home, were seen smiling, listening to music on shared headphones and carrying backpacks and trolley bags filled with all their belongings collected during their seven-year stay in the country. “During their stay in prison,

they had acquired clothes, watches, shoes, books, blankets, bedsheets, provided to them by the embassy or their relatives.

They had sought permission to be able to shop before they returned to their families but since there was a restraining order against them… the request was denied,” Singh said.

With no detention facility available in the state, several rooms of officials at Yellow Gate police station were cleared to make space for them till arrangements for their flight were made.

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