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Hage Geingob: What To Know About Namibian President Who Died After Cancer Diagnosis

Published

3 months ago

February 4, 2024

Editor

Hage Geingob, Namibia’s longest-serving prime minister and third president, was an anti-apartheid activist turned statesman, who cut a reassuring figure.

Hage Geingob passed away early Sunday in a hospital in the capital Windhoek, where he was receiving treatment for cancer. He was 82.

Born in a village in northern Namibia in 1941, Hage Gottfried Geingob was the southern African country’s first president outside of the Ovambo ethnic group, which makes up more than half the country’s population.

He took up activism against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which at the time ruled over Namibia, from his early schooling years before being driven into exile.

He spent almost three decades in Botswana and the United States, leaving the former for the latter in 1964.

The tall, deep-voiced leader studied at Fordham University in New York, and much later in life received a PhD in the United Kingdom.

While in the US, Hage Geingob remained a vocal advocate for Namibia’s independence, representing the local liberation movement, SWAPO, now the ruling party, at the United Nations and across the Americas.

In the early 1970s he started a career working for the UN on governance issues.

Seen as a centrist, he returned to Namibia in 1989, a year before the country’s independence.

“I embraced the soil of Namibia after 27 years in exile. Looking back, the journey of building a new Namibia has been worthwhile,” he said in a Twitter post in 2020 posting a photo of his younger self kissing the tarmac after landing back home.

– Fish rot –

When SWAPO won the first vote in 1990, Geingob was appointed prime minister – a position he held for 12 years before returning to it again in 2012.

In 2014, as the party comfortably won yet another vote, riding on the legacy of its role in the liberation struggle, Geingob became president.

In between top jobs, the composed yet stern talking leader who sported wide-rimmed glasses and a tuft of grey hair on his chin, held various ministerial and internal party positions.

But his first term as president was tainted by a recession, high unemployment and graft allegations.

In 2019, documents published by WikiLeaks suggested that government officials took bribes from an Icelandic firm in exchange for continued access to Namibia’s fishing grounds.

The “fish rot” scandal threatened Geingob’s prospects of a second term, with the head of state also coming under fire for pumping money into a bloated administration and granting contracts to foreign rather than local companies.

His share of the vote dropped considerably in 2019 from the 2014 height of 87 percent, but he was still able to comfortably sail to victory with 56 percent of preferences.

– Hage Geingob, a Football lover –

He suffered a couple of health scares in his later years, having undergone brain surgery in 2013 and a heart valve surgery in South Africa in June 2023.

An avid football fan, he played the sport as a young man, which earned him the nickname “Danger Point”.

He was married three times, in 1967, 1993 and again in 2015 and had as many children. His last consort, Monica Geingos is a lawyer and businesswoman.

Headline

Google To Offer AI-generated Answers In Search Results

Published

7 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

Google has announced it would introduce AI-generated answers to online queries made by users in the United States, in one of the biggest updates to its search engine in 25 years.

“I’m excited to announce that we will begin launching this fully revamped experience, ‘AI overviews,’ to everyone in the US this week,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said at an event in California on Tuesday, May 14.

Google’s search results will feature an AI summary at the top of the page before the more typical unfurling of links.

The AI answers generated by Google’s Gemini technology will offer succinct summaries of what it found on the internet with links to the online sources that supplied the information.

“You can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done – from researching to planning to brainstorming – and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Google Search team boss Liz Reid.

The change comes as Google feels growing pressure from AI-powered search engines like Perplexity, and from the rumors that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is building its own AI search tool.

Searches through AI chats have also appeared on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with users able to get information from the web without Google.

The change will soon spread to other countries, Pichai added, making it accessible to more than a billion people.

Headline

College Volleyball Player Killed In US Nightclub Shooting

Published

7 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

Albany State University volleyball player Mariam Creighton has been tragically killed in a nightclub shooting in Atlanta.

Atlanta Police Department said on Tuesday, May 14, that the incident happened around 2:28 AM on Sunday, May 14, when officers responded to shots fired at the Elleven45 establishment.

Six people were shot, two of whom were pronounced dead at the scene, Creighton and 20-year-old Nakyris Ridley.

The police department said in a statement;

“Preliminary investigation indicates the shooting occurred during a physical dispute at the location that escalated to gunfire.”

Creighton was a member of the ASU Golden Rams volleyball team, and was one semester from graduating from the HBCU with a biology degree.

Her family said she was at the club on Sunday celebrating her niece’s birthday. “It’s just senseless,” Creighton’s sister, Tiffany, said. “My sister was just out having a good time, and now our lives are just altered forever.”

Headline

Nigerian Burnt To Death In Bangkok Car Crash

Published

8 hours ago

May 14, 2024

Editor

A 35-year-old Nigerian man identified as Daniel was burnt to death in a car accident in Bangkok, Thailand.

Bangkok’s Prawet Police Station, confirmed the identity of the Nigerian national in a statement on Tuesday, May 14, 2024,

Daniel, whose Thai wife came to confirm his identity with the police, died on Saturday, May 11, when his car crashed into a road median and caught fire.

This serious road accident occurred at 5:30 a.m. on a three-lane road near Soi Phatthanakan 53/1, Suan Luang Subdistrict and District, Bangkok.

When officials received the report and arrived at the scene, they found a gray Toyota Vios with Samut Prakan province license plates overturned and engulfed in flames, blocking the middle of the road.

The officers spent about 10 minutes spraying water to extinguish the fire, but the car was completely damaged by the flames.

At that time, rescuers had to use cutting and prying equipment to remove the driver’s body from the wreckage and send it to the Police Hospital for an autopsy. They found a document with a front-facing photo of a foreign man.

Eyewitnesses stated that they saw the car driving at high speed in the far right lane before losing control and crashing into the road median.

The car spun and hit a palm tree with such force that it flipped over and ended up on its roof in the middle of the road.

At that moment, good Samaritans tried to pry open the door to help the unconscious driver, but before they could pull him out, sparks ignited, and the car quickly caught fire.