•Photo: Heads of state of Mali’s Assimi Goita, Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traore and Niger’s General Abdourahamane Tiani walk together during the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024. REUTERS/Mahamadou Hamidou.

Burkina Faso’s military-led government has dissolved all political parties and scrapped the legal framework governing their operations.

The decree was approved by the government ‘s council of ministers on Thursday.

The decision by the military rulers who seized power in September 2022 is the latest move to tighten control following the suspension of political activities after the coup.

Burkina Faso’s Interior Minister Emile Zerbo said the decision was part of a broader effort to “rebuild the state” after what he said were widespread abuses and dysfunction in the country’s multiparty system.

He said a government review found that the multiplication of political parties had fuelled divisions and weakened social cohesion.

Before the coup, the country had over 100 registered political parties, with 15 represented in parliament after the 2020 general election.

A twin-propeller aircraft carrying 15 people, including a Colombian lawmaker, Diogenes Quintero, crashed in a mountainous region near the Venezuelan border on January 28.

AFP reported that the aircraft departed from the border city of Cúcuta and lost contact with air traffic control shortly before it was scheduled to land in the nearby town of Ocaña at about 5:00 p.m. GMT.

“There are no survivors,” an official of the aviation authority told AFP. The plane was carrying 13 passengers and two crew members.

The Cúcuta region is known for its rugged terrain, unpredictable weather conditions and areas controlled by Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army.

In a separate report, NDTV disclosed that the government deployed the Colombian Air Force to locate the aircraft and recover the bodies.

Local parliamentarian Wilmer Carrillo expressed concern over the incident, saying, “We have received with concern the information about the air accident in which my colleague, Diogenes Quintero, Carlos Salcedo and their teams were travelling.”

Quintero is a member of Colombia’s Chamber of Deputies, while Salcedo is a candidate in the upcoming elections. The crash adds to a history of fatal aviation accidents involving prominent figures in Colombia.

In January 2025, a private plane crashed in central-eastern Colombia, killing all six people on board, including singer Yeison Jiménez.

More than 850,000 customers in the U.S. as far west as New Mexico were without electricity and over 10,000 flights were canceled on Sunday during a monster winter storm that paralyzed eastern and southern states with heavy snow and ice.

Reuters reports that as snow, freezing rain and dangerously frigid temperatures swept into the eastern two-thirds of the nation on Sunday, the number of power outages continued to rise.

As of 10:47 a.m. EST (1547 GMT) on Sunday, more than 850,000 U.S. customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, with at least 290,000 in Tennessee and over 100,000 each in Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana.

Other states affected included Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia and Alabama.

More than 10,200 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Over 4,000 flights were canceled on Saturday.

Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport said airlines had canceled all flights at the airport on Sunday.Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), opens new tabon Sunday said that it intended to operate on a reduced schedule “subject to real-time frozen precipitation and afternoon storm conditions.”