The six people were in a horse-drawn vehicle when it hit a landmine left over from an earlier conflict in the Casamance region
Six young people were killed when their horse-drawn vehicle hit an old landmine unearthed by rain in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, according to the local mayor.
Casamance is home to one of Africa’s oldest ongoing conflicts, which has claimed thousands of lives since 1982, and the mine was believed to be a remnant from earlier fighting.
Continue reading...UN says government was aware of plane carrying 11 aid workers as year-long conflict with TPLF escalates in Tigray and Amhara
An Ethiopian government airstrike on the capital of the northern Tigray region has forced a UN aid flight to abort a landing in midair.
The UN has suspended its twice-weekly passenger flights to Mekelle for humanitarian personnel after the plane with 11 passengers had to abort the landing on Friday and return to the capital, Addis Ababa.
Continue reading...Care facilities for older people used to be thought ‘un-African’. But destitution caused by Covid has seen demand for care homes soar
Lunch is Angelica Chibiku’s favourite time. At 12pm she sits on her neatly made bed waiting for her meal at the Society of the Destitute Aged (Soda) home for older people in Highfield, a township in south-west Harare.
Chibiku welcomes a helper into her room and cracks a few jokes. She loves to interact with those who bring her food and supplies.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators march in Khartoum and other cities
Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have taken to the streets of the Sudanese capital Khartoum and other major cities demanding full civilian rule, just days after a sit-in was launched calling for a return to military government.
Images posted on social media showed vast crowds marching in different parts of the Sudanese capital in protests to reject military rule as the crisis in the country’s troubled transition from authoritarian rule deepened.
Continue reading...Retirement of Najin, 32, leaves her daughter Fatu as the only egg donor in embryo implantation scheme
One of the world’s last two northern white rhinos is being retired from a breeding programme aimed at saving the species from extinction.
Najin, 32, is the mother of Fatu, who is now the only donor left in the programme, which aims to implant artificially developed embryos into another more abundant species of rhino in Kenya.
Continue reading...Suspension will take effect from 11.59pm on Wednesday and will last until further notice
Morocco is banning flights to and from the UK because of rising coronavirus case rates. Airlines cancelled several flights between the countries on Wednesday before the suspension comes into effect at 11.59pm.
Latest figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control show the north African country’s weekly rate of reported coronavirus cases on 14 October stood at 10.4 per 100,000 people. The UK’s comparable rate is 445.5.
Continue reading...Sculpture and its futuristic creator held for 10 days, possibly in fear she is part of spying plot
She has been described as “a vision of the future” who is every bit as good as other abstract artists today, but Ai-Da – the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist – hit a temporary snag before her latest exhibition when Egyptian security forces detained her at customs.
Ai-Da is due to open and present her work at the Great Pyramid of Giza on Thursday, the first time contemporary art has been allowed next to the pyramid in thousands of years.
Continue reading...Bank also pleads guilty to wire fraud and forgives hundred of millions of dollars of debt owed by country
Credit Suisse has been fined nearly £350m by global regulators, pleaded guilty to wire fraud, and agreed to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of debt owed by Mozambique in an attempt to draw a line under the long-running “tuna bonds” loan scandal.
The Swiss banking company had been accused of “serious” failings in its financial crime controls by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice that will put the bank under heavy monitoring for three years after having “defrauded US and international investors”.
Continue reading...A gigantic sunfish found tangled in tuna fishing nets in the Mediterranean could weigh up to 2000kg, according to experts. The fish was measured at 3.2 metres long and 2.9 metres wide, a record find for Ceuta, a Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa. When the sunfish was weighed it almost broke a 100kg scale. Enrique Ostalé, a marine biologist, said he had heard of sunfish this size only in books
Continue reading...In a country where gay sex is against the law, it can be almost impossible for the LGBT community to access services tackling domestic violence – and during the pandemic, lockdowns saw abuse soar
All photos by DeLovie Kwagala
* Names have been changed. Since these interviews took place all the subjects have ceased living with their abusers and are finding ways to heal
Continue reading...Boxing helped prizefighter Arifonso Zvenyika overcome real hardship. Now he teaches the sport he loves to aspiring fighters in a Harare ghetto
Beneath a corrugated iron roof in the crowded Harare suburb of Mbare, a group of boys darts back and forth across a smooth concrete floor, firing a series of rapid punches into the air.
A wiry older man, dressed in low-slung tracksuit bottoms and flip-flops, watches their moves, encouraging them to “Jab! Jab! Jab!”.
Continue reading...Protesters say post-dictatorship interim government has failed them politically and economically
Hundreds of pro-military Sudanese protesters have rallied for a second day in Khartoum, in an escalation of what the prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, called the “worst and most dangerous crisis” of the country’s precarious transition.
The protesters are demanding the dissolution of Sudan’s post-dictatorship interim government, saying it has failed them politically and economically.
Continue reading...Protesters say they want the government of prime minister Abdalla Hamdok dismissed and replaced by the military
Thousands of pro-military protesters have rallied in central Khartoum, vowing not to leave until the government is dissolved in a threat to Sudan’s transition to civilian rule.
The protest on Saturday comes as Sudanese politics reels from divisions among the factions steering the rocky transition from two decades of dictatorship under president Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the army in April 2019 following weeks of mass protests.
Continue reading...Former UK prime minister says operation could be under way within days if world leaders signed off
More than 100,000 lives can be saved in Africa by undertaking the emergency airlift of 240m unused vaccines in the next fortnight, Gordon Brown has urged.
The former prime minister called on a group of rich nations to back “the biggest peacetime public policy decision” by supporting an October airlift that would see unused vaccines handed to parts of the global south struggling the most.
Continue reading...Former health secretary will no longer become special envoy for UN’s economic commission for Africa
Matt Hancock, the former UK health secretary, will no longer become a special envoy for the United Nations, after the job offer was withdrawn.
Hancock said on Tuesday he was “honoured” to be working with the UN’s economic commission for Africa (UNECA) to help the continent recover from the pandemic.
Continue reading...Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, who directed the acclaimed drama, reveals the struggle to portray his community ‘with dignity and compassion’
“I am Somali and I made this film for Somali people to watch a film in their mother tongue without needing subtitles,” says film director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed. Ahmed made his feature debut with The Gravedigger’s Wife, and after premiering in May at the Cannes film festival’s Critics’ Week, it made headlines as the first film from Somalia to be put forward for the Oscars.
“As a film-maker, I felt a sense of responsibility to tell the story of how I view my Somali community and to tell this story with dignity, tenderness and compassion – all the qualities I’ve been raised with,” says Ahmed, who was born in Somalia before moving to Finland as a teenager.
Continue reading...Kenyan police say they have arrested the husband of the distance runner Agnes Tirop, a two-times world championship bronze medallist who was found dead at her home.
The 25-year-old Tirop, who represented Kenya in the 5,000 metres at the Tokyo Olympics, was stabbed in the neck with a knife. Police said on Thursday they had arrested Emmanuel Rotich in the coastal city of Mombasa, hours after pleading with him to surrender.
Continue reading...Decision follows hours of deliberation over whether it is fair for four Egyptian security officials to be tried in absentia
A court in Rome has suspended trial proceedings against four Egyptian security officials accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering the Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, following hours of deliberation over whether it is fair for the men to be tried in absentia.
The trial was returned to a preliminary court, after judges debated for seven hours about whether hearings could continue amid any doubt they were aware of proceedings against them.
Continue reading...ICJ ruling aggravates fractious relations between two countries and threatens to destabilise restive region
Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has rejected a decision by the UN’s highest court to grant Somalia control of disputed waters in the Indian Ocean, saying it would “strain relations” between the neighbouring countries.
The president accused the international court of justice of imposing its authority on a dispute “it had neither jurisdiction nor competence” to oversee after it delineated a new boundary that gives Somalia territorial rights over a large portion of the ocean, which is thought to be rich in oil and gas reserves. According to the new maritime border, Somalia has gained several offshore oil exploration blocks previously claimed by Kenya.
Continue reading...The accused, all members of the National Security Agency, are being tried in absentia after the researcher’s kidnap and killing in Cairo
A court in Rome has begun the trial of four Egyptian security service officers accused of killing an Italian researcher, Giulio Regeni, five and a half years after his mutilated body was found in a ditch by a road in Cairo.
Italian prosecutors accuse Gen Tariq Saber, Col Aser Ibrahim, Capt Hesham Helmi, and Maj Magdi Abd al-Sharif of the “aggravated kidnapping” of Regeni, while Sharif is also charged with “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder”. Kidnap carries a potential sentence of up to eight years in Italy, while Sharif could receive a life sentence.
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