He is a former refugee, a Muslim, and now the first Somali-British mayor, the youngest ever Lord Mayor for Sheffield city in the United Kingdom.

The 28-year-old Magid Magid has also become the first Green Party mayor. He was sworn in Friday.

“This really was a victory for the Somalis and other Muslim communities in Sheffield,” Kaltum Osman, a young Somali woman who also won a seat at Sheffield’s City Council, told VOA Somali. “This was a victory for the young men and women of Sheffield. It was a clear message for every person that’s been told they have limits on their dreams.”

Magid was born in Burao, a town in the northern breakaway region of Somaliland.

Osman said Magid came to Sheffield when he was five years old, after spending six months in a refugee camp in Ethiopia with his mother and five siblings.

“He came here at a young age, grew up and as young man he was very ambitious and thought that there was nothing that could prevent him from being what he wanted to be,” Osman said.

Speaking during his inaugural ceremony, Magid said he remembered little about his early childhood in Somalia and that he had never returned to his country of birth.

“I remember just being happy, playing around as you do as a kid, but in reality it was a completely different story,” he said.

But Magid said he remembered well the difficulties his family experienced as refugees, especially when they arrived in Sheffield’s Burngreave area, where his family set up home.

“Life was difficult when my family arrived. We were struggling with learning the language and adapting to a new way of life. My mother worked as a cleaner to take care of me and siblings,” he said.

Magid studied aquatic zoology at the University of Hull, developed an interest in politics while at university, and in 2016 was elected as Green councilor for Broomhill and Sharrow Vale ward in Sheffield.
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From the windswept Falkland Islands, battered by the South Atlantic and home to colonies of penguins, to the heat of Kenya, India and Australia, people around the world celebrated Britain’s glittering royal wedding Saturday.

The scenes of pageantry and romance in Windsor, where Prince Harry married his American bride Meghan Markle, were beamed to locations across continents where people dressed up, raised their glasses and enjoyed the fun of a uniquely British event.

“We are very fond of our royal family and it’s lovely to celebrate an event like this,” said Falkland Islander Leona Roberts, a member of the local assembly and one of the organizers of a wedding party in the tiny capital, Port Stanley.

Children dressed up as princes and princesses for the party, where they received special gifts.

Argentina disputes Britain’s sovereignty over the Falklands, which lie 300 miles (500 km) from the Argentine coast, and the two countries fought a war in 1982 over the islands. Many islanders are fiercely patriotic about Britain.

“As a Falkland Islander, I definitely feel a bond with the royal family as a symbol of Britishness. I am a staunch royalist,” said Arlette Betts, at her home on the waterfront in Port Stanley, home to most of the archipelago’s 4,000 inhabitants.

On the other side of the world, in India, a group of Mumbai’s famed dabbawalas, or lunch delivery men, chose a traditional sari dress and kurta jacket as wedding gifts for Harry and his bride, while at the Gurukul School of Art children painted posters of the royal couple and Queen Elizabeth.

In Australia, where the British monarch remains the head of state, some pubs held wedding parties, while a cinema chain screened the wedding live across its network. Viewers dressed in finery, with prizes for the most creative outfits.

At the Royal Hotel in Sydney, guests celebrated with a fancy banquet and burst into a spontaneous chorus of “Stand by Me” when a gospel choir sang the Ben E. King hit during the ceremony in Windsor.

“I just think the monarchy as such brings everyone together,” said retiree Bernie Dennis, one of those attending the banquet. “It’s like a family wedding.”

In Melbourne, fashion designer Nadia Foti attended an “English high tea” where guests wore plastic crowns and enjoyed traditional British treats such as scones and the popular summer drink Pimm’s.

“It’s exciting for the fashion and the spectacular,” said Foti. “It’s a joyous occasion and I’ve made a plum cake to celebrate in classic English style.”

There were lavish celebrations at the Windsor Golf and Country Club on the outskirts of Nairobi, where guests had shelled out 1 million shillings ($10,000) to view the wedding on a giant screen, enjoy a seven-course banquet and fly to Mount Kenya by helicopter for breakfast the following morning.

Trainee lawyer Odette Ndaruzi, who is preparing for her own wedding later in the year, said she wanted to pick up some tips.

“I’m excited to see how the maidens in England are dressed, the jewelry and colors they are wearing,” she said.

The event drew criticism from some Kenyan media, however, due to the hefty price tag in a country where millions live in slums.

But perhaps the greatest interest in the royal wedding, outside of Britain, was in the bride’s home country, the United States.

In New York, revelers headed to Harry’s Bar to watch the ceremony on TV, surrounded by U.S. and British flags. Many posed for photos alongside cardboard cutouts of the bride and groom.

In Los Angeles, a lively crowd at the English-style Cat and Fiddle pub in Hollywood enjoyed pints of beer, royal-themed cocktails and British staples like sausage rolls and scones.

Popular tipples included the “Bloody Harry,” billed as a modern take on the Bloody Mary, but with added ginger as a cheeky nod to the prince’s red hair.
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Guests of Prince Harry and his new wife, Meghan, were set to tuck into dishes including Scottish langoustines, grilled asparagus and rhubarb crumble tartlets at a lunchtime reception for the newlyweds.

Some of the 600 or so guests arrived hours before the beginning of the ceremony at noon, and were likely to be eager to sample the sumptuous foods on offer.

Canapes being served include poached free-range chicken in a lightly spiced yogurt with roasted apricot, croquettes of confit Windsor lamb and garden-pea panna cotta with quail eggs and lemon verbena.

There were also bowl foods such as pea and mint risotto with pea shoots, truffle oil and parmesan crisps, and 10-hour slow roasted Windsor pork belly, all washed down with champagne, wines and a range of soft drinks.

The wedding cake included elderflower syrup, made at the Queen’s residence in Sandringham from the estate’s own trees, with an Amalfi lemon curd filling and elderflower buttercream.
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Human rights experts from the United Nations called on Spain Friday to halt extraditions of Chinese and Taiwanese nationals to China because of concerns they would be exposed to the risk of torture, ill treatment or the death penalty.

They cited the December 2016 arrest of 269 suspects, including 219 Taiwanese, over their alleged involvement in telecom scams to defraud Chinese citizens in a police swoop dubbed Operation Wall.

Two Taiwanese individuals were reported to have been extradited to China on Thursday and the U.N. experts said they feared others would also be deported soon.

“We are dismayed by the decision by the Spanish courts to extradite these individuals. The ruling clearly contravenes Spain’s international commitment to refrain from expelling, returning or extraditing people to any state where there are well-founded reasons to believe that they might be in danger of being subjected to torture,” the experts said.

The experts also said some of those detained may be victims of human trafficking after they stated they had been brought to Spain under the promise they would work as tourist guides.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry thanked Spain for “handling Taiwan matters on the basis of the ‘One China’ principle.”

“We are also very happy that the two countries of China and Spain have achieved increasingly fruitful results in cracking down on crime and in joint law enforcement as political trust continuously deepens and pragmatic cooperation advances in a variety of areas,” the ministry said at a briefing on Saturday.

The Spanish government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin endorsed a new government line-up on Friday at the start of his new term in office, sticking in most cases with the incumbents but elevating two newcomers with ties to the intelligence services.

Dmitry Medvedev, whom Putin had already reappointed as prime minister, proposed the new cabinet at a meeting with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi that was broadcast live on Russian state television.

“Almost all the candidates are well-known people with experience and a good track record at their previous places of work,” Putin said. “I give my approval,” he said.

The big-hitters in Putin’s team kept their jobs: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and Alexander Novak, the country’s energy minister who helped mastermind a global deal to prop up crude oil prices.

Maxim Oreshkin, appointed economy minister in late 2016, will retain his job, as will trade and industry minister Denis Manturov, and Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov.

Medvedev named Yevgeny Zinichev, who served as Deputy Director of Federal Security Service (FSB), as the new emergency minister. Medvedev put forward the son of FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, Dmitry, for the job of agriculture minister.

There were no places in the cabinet for Igor Shuvalov and Arkady Dvorkovich, who were deputy prime ministers in the outgoing government. They had positioned themselves as champions of private business, though with limited practical effect.

The currency market reacted negatively to the appointments in the minutes after the lineup was unveiled.

The ruble pared gains and weakened to 62.19 versus the dollar from levels of 62.08 seen before the announcement.

Putin secured a new six-year term in office after more than 70 percent of voters backed him in a March 18 presidential election. He is now in his second consecutive term, and his fourth term overall.

Putin was sworn in for the new term in early May, and signaled he would keep faith with a policy direction that, among other things, has brought Russia into conflict with the West.
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Doctors say former Russian spy Sergei Skripal has been discharged from a hospital, more than two months after he was poisoned with a nerve agent.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, and spent weeks in critical condition.

Yulia recovered more quickly than her father and was discharged last month.

Salisbury District Hospital said Friday that both patients had now been released. They have been taken to an undisclosed location for their safety.

Britain says the pair was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent and that Russia was behind the attack. Moscow denies it, and the attack has soured relations between Russia and the West. 
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