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US’s Gullah Geechee communities celebrate historic cultural festival rooted in West Africa

Gullah Geechee culture has its roots in the late 17th and 18th Century, when African peoples were increasingly brought to English colonies in what is now the United States and enslaved on plantations.

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• File photo of Gullah Geechee Heritage Festival 2025.

On 12 October 2026, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor will celebrate the 20th anniversary of when the United States Congress designated it a National Heritage Area.

According to BBC, spanning from North Carolina to southern Florida, Gullah Geechee culture lives on through its unique language, musical traditions and beliefs, offering travellers a window into the many ways African culture directly shaped the US.

Gullah Geechee culture has its roots in the late 17th and 18th Century, when African peoples were increasingly brought to English colonies in what is now the United States and enslaved on plantations.

Planters in the Carolina Lowcountry along the Eastern seaboard sought out people from Central African countries and West Africa’s Rice Coast, exploiting their agricultural knowledge to cultivate rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton in the coastal wetlands and islands.

The working conditions were brutal, but that same geographical isolation helped the enslaved and their descendants retain – and adapt – African cultural practices.

Traditional West and Central African one-pot cooking techniques combined with local seafood, vegetables, grains and meats gave rise to Gullah Geechee cuisine.

Lowcountry red rice, which combines rice, tomatoes, spices, smoked pork and sausage, is often compared to jollof rice, a one-pot rice stew cooked with tomatoes, spices and meat strongly associated with the Senegambia region of West Africa.

West African coiled basketry traditions were likewise adapted to the Lowcountry, using readily available sweetgrass, bulrush, palmetto and pine.

The “ring shout” – a Gullah Geechee ritual where participants form a circle, then move counterclockwise in a rhythmic pattern while stomping their feet, clapping their hands and singing in “call and response” – recalled West African musical and spiritual practices.

• Culled from BBC

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International

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Resigns; CFO Colette Kress Named Interim Leader

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Nvidia’s board of directors announced Thursday that co-founder Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board, effective immediately.

Colette Kress, the company’s longtime executive vice president and chief financial officer, has been appointed interim CEO.

She will continue to serve as CFO while leading the company until a permanent successor is named. The board said it has begun a search that will consider both internal and external candidates.

The board also appointed Harvey C. Jones as its first-ever chair. Jones, a longtime Nvidia director and former CEO and executive chairman of Synopsys, will help oversee the transition.

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and led it for 33 years, transforming it from a graphics-chip maker into a dominant force in accelerated computing and artificial intelligence.

Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after nearly 25 years in finance roles at companies including Cisco and Microsoft. In a statement, she said the company remains focused on serving customers, partners, developers, and shareholders while building on the foundation Huang created.

Shares of Nvidia fell sharply in early trading following the announcement.

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International

Democrats Win US midterm elections

Trump acknowledges the Iran war, and the rising cost of living, were factors in his Republican Party’s defeat – as the White House posts on social media: “Trump is still your president”

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US President Donald Trump

The Democrats win the Senate and the House in US midterm elections, taking control of Congress for the rest of Donald Trump’s tenure.

Voters in conservative bastions who had propelled the president to his second term in office just two years ago swung dramatically toward Democrats, fueled by deep frustration over the unpopular war with Iran, anxiety over the high cost of living and anger at ‌Trump’s stewardship of the country.

Trump acknowledges the Iran war, and the rising cost of living, were factors in his Republican Party’s defeat – as the White House posts on social media: “Trump is still your president”

In Texas, the biggest Republican state, Democrats ended a decades-long losing streak in seismic fashion, winning a Senate seat and ousting three-term Governor Greg Abbott.Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since the Great Depression nearly a century ago, and in South Carolina, a state that Trump carried by nearly 18 points in 2024, Democrats turned aside his hand-picked Senate candidate.The results will usher in a new era of divided government in Washington, following two years in which the Republican-controlled Congress rarely exercised its power to rein in Trump.

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JUST IN: Plane Crash Near Trump’s Florida Home Kills All 9 Aboard

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A private Learjet 60 crashed into a residential neighborhood in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, killing all nine people on board, officials confirmed.

The aircraft, flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas, went down around 12:50 p.m. local time near Cresthaven/Greenacres, roughly 7–11 kilometers (about 4–7 miles) from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

It struck near a busy roadway at the entrance to a mobile-home community, creating a large fireball and leaving a crater in the road. Debris was scattered across a wide area, and nearby power and water lines were damaged.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the crash a “horrific tragedy” and confirmed there were no survivors among the nine occupants.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the impact as “cataclysmic,” saying it “looked like a missile going down.” No injuries were reported among people on the ground. About 600 residents of a nearby mobile-home park were evacuated.

Trump had been at Mar-a-Lago earlier Sunday but departed on Air Force One from the nearby airport about an hour before the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with support from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Early reports noted the crew had discussed moderate turbulence and ice shortly before the steep descent.

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