France will on Thursday formally hand back its last military bases in Senegal, leaving the French army with no permanent camps in west and central Africa.

Ending the French army’s 65 years in Senegal, the pull-out comes after similar withdrawals across the continent, with former colonies increasingly turning their backs on their former ruler.

Around 350 French soldiers, primarily tasked with conducting joint operations with the Senegalese army, will leave the west African nation after a three-month departure process. France started ceding its bases to Senegal in March.

After storming to victory in 2024 elections promising radical change, Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye demanded France withdraw troops from the country by 2025.

Unlike the leaders of other former colonies such as junta-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, however, Faye has insisted that Senegal will keep working with Paris.

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In a ceremony in Dakar, France will return Camp Geille, its largest base in the country, and its airfield at Dakar airport.

Senegal’s Chief of General Staff, General Mbaye Cisse, and General Pascal Ianni, who commands France’s troops in Africa, will attend.

– ‘Sovereignty’ –

After gaining independence in 1960, Senegal became one of France’s staunchest African allies, playing host to French troops throughout its history.

Faye’s predecessor, Macky Sall, continued that tradition.

Faye, who ran on a ticket promising a clean break with the Sall era, has said that Senegal would treat France like any other foreign partner.

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Pledging to make his country more self-sufficient, the president gave a deadline of the end of 2025 for all foreign armies to withdraw.

“Senegal is an independent country, it is a sovereign country and sovereignty does not accept the presence of military bases in a sovereign country,” Faye said at the end of 2024, while maintaining that “France remains an important partner for Senegal”.

Faye has also urged Paris to apologise for colonial atrocities, including the massacre on December 1, 1944 of dozens of African troops who had fought for France in World War II.

– Continent-wide pull-out –

With governments across Africa increasingly questioning France’s military presence, Paris has closed or reduced numbers at bases across its former empire.

In February France handed back its sole remaining base in Ivory Coast, ending decades of French presence at the site.

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The month before, France turned over the Kossei base in Chad, its last military foothold in the unrest-hit Sahel region.

Coups in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali between 2020 and 2023 have swept military strongmen to power. All have cut ties with France and turned to Russia instead for help in fighting the Sahel’s decade-long jihadist insurgency.

The Central African Republic, also a former French colony to which the Kremlin has sent mercenaries, has likewise demanded a French pull-out.

Meanwhile the army has turned its base in Gabon into a camp shared with the central African nation.

Only the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti will be home to a permanent French army base following Thursday’s withdrawal.

France intends to make its base in Djibouti, with some 1,500 people, its military headquarters for Africa.
(VANGUARD)

A Nurse, Karenjeet Warburton, has been banned for four years for paying a patient $3,000 to cut her ex-lover’s penis and tongue off and also burn his face with acid in Australia, Daily Mail reports.

Warburton had dated her ex-lover, a senior Queensland Police Inspector, Don McKay, between March 2020 and early 2021.

According to the Daily Mail, the decision was published last week after it was handed down to Karenjeet Kaur Warburton in March by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

The senior Queensland Police Inspector, Don McKay. Credit: Daily Mail
Tribunal member Julie Dick heard Warburton had approached a patient she thought “might be up for” severely injuring her former boyfriend, senior Queensland Police Inspector Don McKay.

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She gave the patient, Andrew Bown, photos of the inspector and his home between April 1 and October 6, 2021, and handed over $3,000 for the proposed hit.

“She had paid a significant amount and offered an even more significant amount to the proposed assailant,”Ms Dick wrote in the tribunal decision.

“Warburton instructed a law enforcement participant to have Insp McKay’s ‘penis and tongue cut off, his face burnt with acid, his spine to be severed with a knife for the purpose of causing paralysis, or to break every bone in his body so that he could no longer walk or talk.”

The patient, Andrew Bown. Credit: Daily Mail

Ms Dick noted that Warburton’s efforts only stopped when she was arrested.

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She pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to procure grievous bodily harm and one count of attempting to procure a malicious act with intent and was sentenced to five years behind bars, to be suspended after 16 months.

When facing the health tribunal, the former nurse did not contest claims that she had committed professional misconduct by asking a patient to carry out her dirty work.

The tribunal banned Warburton from working in healthcare for four years, which included time she had already served behind bars.

“It is unfortunate that this serious behaviour has led to the respondent being in the difficult circumstances in which she now finds herself,” Ms Dick wrote in her ruling.

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“The tribunal is aware she will have to reapply for registration.

“Upon doing so, she will be confronted with having no recency of practice and there will be other steps that she might have to take.”

Bown was charged with committing arson, attempting to procure a person to do grievous bodily harm to another person and possessing a dangerous item to assist another person in committing a crime.

He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars for his part in the plot by the Cairns District Court in November 2022.

Two stars of the “Harry Potter” films, including actress Emma Watson, were each banned from driving for six months Wednesday after being caught speeding in separate incidents.

Watson, 35, who played Hermione Granger, the friend of boy wizard Potter in the hugely popular movie franchise, was banned for driving at 38 miles (61 km) an hour in a 30-mile zone in southeastern Banbury last July.

Zoe Wanamaker, 76, who played Quidditch teacher Madame Hooch in “Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone”, was banned for six months for her offence.

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She had been caught driving at 46 miles an hour in a 40-mile zone of the M4 motorway in southeastern Berkshire last August.

The cases were dealt with separately by a lower magistrates court in the town of High Wycombe.

Neither of the stars attended the hearings, at which they were each fined £1,044 ($1,400).

Watson, who was stopped while driving her blue Audi, has been studying at Oxford University. Her lawyer told the court that although she was a student “she is in a position to pay the fine”.