Burundi would not consent to the deployment, so the AU thought better of mounting what would be tantamount to an invasion. “The African Union has abandoned its plan to send 5,000 peacekeepers to help restore stability to troubled Burundi. Officials said they would instead encourage political dialogue between Burundi’s opposing sides. Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza had fiercely opposed the AU plan’s to send peacekeepers…The AU could have deployed troops without Burundi’s consent – a clause in its charter allows it to intervene in a member state because of grave circumstances, which include war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity – but it would have been the first time it had done so.” (BBC http://bbc.in/1UALIk1)
A quarter century in the making for Aung San Suu Kyi…”The Nobel peace laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) will finally take her seat at the head of Myanmar’s government when the new parliament sits on Monday. It comes 26 years after Suu Kyi won a substantial parliamentary majority in the parliamentary elections in 1990 — a result that was subsequently nullified — and two months after the NLD’s landslide victory in the 2015 vote.” (CNNhttp://cnn.it/1UAMjSM)
Big blasts in Nigeria…”At least 65 people were killed during an attack by Islamist militant group Boko Haram near Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri, a Reuters reporter said after counting bodies at a hospital morgue. The remains of a dozen victims were burnt beyond recognition inSaturday’s attack when militants opened fire on residents, set fire to houses and targeted a crowd with suicide bombers, security and medical officials said.” (Reuters http://reut.rs/1UAMsWu)
And Syria…At least 60 people were killed, including 25 Shi’ite fighters, and dozens wounded on Sunday by a car bomb and two suicide bombers in a district of Damascus where Syria’s holiest Shi’ite shrine is located, a monitor said. (Reuters http://reut.rs/1UAMpty)
Africa
Switzerland is struggling to resolve the case of a Swiss woman kidnapped for a second time by jihadists in Mali, Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter said in an interview published Sunday. (AFPhttp://yhoo.it/1UAN1zv)
A military general who opposes Uganda’s longtime president was arrested ahead of presidential elections next month, his lawyer said Sunday. (AP http://yhoo.it/1KQh8NK)
France aims to scale back its military presence in Central African Republic by the end of the year, its defence minister said in a French media interview, as Paris continues to count on forthcoming elections to ease tension in the turbulent African country. (Reuters http://bit.ly/1KQguzV)
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told African leaders on Saturday they should not use legal loopholes or undemocratic constitutional changes to “cling to power”, and that they should respect term limits. (Reuters http://bit.ly/1SlbdbL)
The U.S. has boosted its emergency food aid to Ethiopia by nearly $100 million to combat one of the worst droughts in decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced Sunday. (APhttp://yhoo.it/1QAWTbl)
MENA
After boycotting the start of indirect peace talks, representatives of the main Syrian opposition group met Sunday with the U.N. envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, in Geneva, with both sides saying there had been progress in resolving some of the issues that had the opposition threatening to leave. (VOAhttp://bit.ly/1UAMEFf )
The United Nations appealed on Sunday for $861 million to help Iraq meet a big funding gap in its 2016 emergency response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the war against Islamic State. (Reuters http://yhoo.it/1P6Geda)
A Palestinian policeman shot three Israeli soldiers, seriously wounding two, at a West Bank checkpoint on Sunday before being killed by soldiers, the Israeli military said. (NYT http://nyti.ms/1UAMSfk )
Human Rights Watch on Sunday accused Yemen’s Huthi rebels of confiscating humanitarian aid sent into Taez, urging the Iran-backed insurgents to allow access into the besieged city. (AFPhttp://yhoo.it/1KQh9Bo)
One of two attackers who wore explosive belts in Friday’s deadly assault on a Shiite mosque in the country’s east was a 22-year-old Saudi national, Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry announced. (NYThttp://nyti.ms/1UANnpZ )
The number of Syrian refugees stranded on Jordan’s border and waiting for permission to enter has risen to 20,000, with 4,000 to 5,000 more arriving in the remote desert area every month, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in the kingdom said Sunday. (AP http://yhoo.it/1KQha8o)
Jordan says the most recent census counted 1.265 million Syrians in the kingdom, or twice the number of registered Syrian refugees. (VOA http://bit.ly/1Pru8ij)
Asia
China strongly condemned the United States after a U.S. warship deliberately sailed near one of the Beijing-controlled islands in the hotly contested South China Sea to exercise freedom of navigation and challenge China’s vast sea claims. (NYT http://nyti.ms/1UANdPj)
The Americas
With a political vacuum now a real possibility in Haiti after presidential and legislative elections were postponed indefinitely, Sandra Honore, chief of the UN’s MINUSTAH mission, rejected accusations of international interference. (AFP http://yhoo.it/1P6GdWy)
The former president of El Salvador, Francisco Flores, has died after suffering a brain hemorrhage. Mr Flores, 56 had been in a coma since undergoing emergency surgery. (BBChttp://bbc.in/1KQgmjZ)
…and the rest
Senior German conservatives sought at the weekend to reassure Germans concerned about a record migrant influx, saying numbers must go down and criminal refugees could be deported as a poll showed support for the bloc slipping. (Reuters http://yhoo.it/1KQhdBj)
Over 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children have disappeared in Europe, the EU police agency Europol said Sunday, fearing many have been whisked into sex trafficking rings or the slave trade. (AFP http://yhoo.it/1SSd0oj)
Opinion/Blogs
What Data Can Do to Fight Poverty (NY Times http://nyti.ms/1KQjDjc)
It’s not possible to innovate people out of poverty (Humanosphere http://bit.ly/1SSeoHG)
Zika Virus Isn’t The First Disease To Spark A Debate About Abortion (Goats and Sodahttp://n.pr/1KQh9l1)
David Cameron on Fighting Poverty (An Africanist Perspective http://bit.ly/1P6KNEd)
A provocation on Burundi (Reinventing Peace http://bit.ly/1P6KSYB)
We print money to bail out banks. Why can’t we do it to solve climate change? (Guardianhttp://bit.ly/1P6KVUs)
Why isn’t aid for infrastructure going to the countries that need it most? (ODI http://bit.ly/1SSejU9)
A “Paradigm Shift” in Mexican Anticorruption Law? (Global Anticorruption Blog http://bit.ly/1SSegYF)
The Emergence of Subversive Charities in China (Policy Innovations http://bit.ly/1Prw2Qc)
Why Kagame’s bid to serve a third term makes sense for Rwanda (The Conversationhttp://bit.ly/1Sv5ZZd)