UN agencies say millions at risk if aid can’t reach areas of country stricken by floods, violence and Covid-19
Parts of South Sudan are facing a “catastrophic” conflict-fuelled famine, humanitarian groups warned on Friday.
Three UN agencies have called for a halt to violence to allow urgent access to parts of Jonglei state, where they said people have already run out of food because of insecurity, flooding and the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...African-led study expected to involve 1,600 people over next three years in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa
The first trial in Africa to test two new vaccines to protect against HIV got under way in Uganda this week, raising hopes of an end to the epidemic that affects millions of people across the continent.
The African-led PrEPVacc study will test two experimental combination vaccines to see if they can provide any protection against HIV in people most at risk of infection.
Continue reading...Katsina state governor reveals rescue in televised interview, after abduction claimed by Boko Haram
More than 300 schoolboys kidnapped in northern Nigeria have been rescued, the Katsina state governor has said.
The 344 boys, whose abduction was claimed by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, were on their way back to Katsina, Aminu Masari told the state broadcaster on Thursday.
Continue reading...Release of 18 men seized by Khalifa Haftar’s forces ends standoff between countries
Eighteen Italian fishermen, held captive in Libya for more than 100 days, have been freed, ending a political standoff between the two countries over the fate of the men.
The prolonged imprisonment of the group had become an embarrassment for Italy’s government, with critics accusing ministers of failing to stand up to Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who holds sway in eastern Libya.
Continue reading...In a year that Zimbabwe should have been celebrating its 40th anniversary of independence, the country has battled drought, protests and food insecurity. In response, photographer Hannah Mentz created a project showing the talents and achievements of 40 Zimbabweans, including leading women in their field
Thanks in part to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Tunisians are freer than before, but many are miserable and disillusioned
His act of despair still shakes the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation triggered revolutions across the Middle East, has a boulevard named after him in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis. In his home town of Sidi Bouzid, he is depicted in a giant portrait facing the local government headquarters.
But a decade since he set himself on fire in protest at state corruption and brutality, Bouazizi is out of fashion in Tunisia – along with the revolution his death inspired. His family have moved to Canada and cut most ties with Sidi Bouzid. “They were smeared,” says Bilal Gharby, 32, a family friend.
Continue reading...Wooden fragment from at least 3000BC discovered by chance by Egyptian university researcher
A lost artefact from the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of only three objects ever recovered from inside the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, has been found in a chance discovery at the University of Aberdeen.
Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany, originally from Egypt, was reviewing items in the university’s Asia collection when she came across a cigar box marked with her country’s former flag.
Continue reading...Doubts over Islamist extremists’ involvement in abduction of more than 300 students last week
The leader of Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group that abducted hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria six years ago, has claimed responsibility for the mass abduction of students in north-western Katsina state last week.
In an audio tape released on Tuesday, Abubakar Shekau said: “Our brothers were behind the abduction in Katsina.”
Continue reading...Mines laid by the jihadist group and and other militant organisations in the north-east are a lethal threat to internally displaced people
As food shortages worsen due to drought and the economic insecurity of lockdown, one in three children are malnourished
Baby Grace lies quietly in the clinical ward under the watchful gaze of her mother, Rose Mapeka. Her parched skin, which hangs off her tiny body, and the milkiness of her eyes, show only too clearly that the 18-month-old is undernourished.
Grace is lucky to be alive. Health workers in Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, identified her as needing immediate hospital treatment for malnutrition during their home visits to the city’s nursing mothers.
Continue reading...Mines laid by Boko Haram and other groups leave millions at risk, particularly in Borno state where insurgency most acute
More than 100 people were killed or injured by landmines across north-east Nigeria in the first three months of this year, according to a new report.
Mines laid during the conflict between Boko Haram, other armed groups and the Nigerian army left 408 people dead and 644 injured between January 2016 and August this year, says the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a landmine clearance charity. Since March 2018, the country has recorded an average of five landmine casualties a week. Actual numbers are thought to be higher due to underreporting. The first 15 weeks of this year saw one casualty a day.
Continue reading...Dutch PM to speak to the nation tonight; ministers to recommend restrictions are extended in Poland
The US has reported 16,113,148 cases of new coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, with 1,476,230 cases reported in the last seven days.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that 17,184 people had died from Covid-19 in the previous week, taking the total US death toll so far to 298,266.
Turkish president has said Turkey will impose a five-day full lockdown beginning on 31 December, as official data showed new daily coronavirus deaths hit a record 229.
Recep Tayip Erdoğan, speaking after a cabinet meeting, said the stay-home order would begin at 9pm on New Year’s Eve and run to 4 January.
Continue reading...The extraordinary shock of people power gave way to a bitter backlash. So where to now?
A decade ago this week, a young fruit seller called Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight outside the provincial headquarters of his home town in Tunisia, in protest against local police officials who had seized his cart and produce.
Accounts of the 26-year-old’s shocking act rippled through his homeland, where hundreds of thousands of people who had also been humiliated by an atrophied state and its officials now found the courage to raise their voices.
Continue reading...Some students ran for safety as police exchanged fire with bandits ‘armed with AK-47 rifles’
Hundreds of Nigerian students are missing after gunmen attacked a secondary school in the country’s north-western Katsina state, police have confirmed.
The Government Science secondary school in Kankara was attacked on Friday night by a large group of bandits who shot “with AK-47 rifles”, a state police spokesman said.
Continue reading...Germany introduces new restrictions to combat spread of virus; Turkey changes counting method, almost doubling cases
Here are some striking images of Dr. Luigi Cavanna visiting his patients in their homes in small towns and rural areas in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy.
He checks his patients’ oxygen levels, uses ultrasound to scan their lungs and tests them and their relatives for coronavirus.
Residents in Jersey care homes are receiving Covid vaccinations a day earlier than expected, the island’s government has announced.
Officials said the government made the call to start on Sunday rather than Monday “in view of the positive Covid cases in care homes”, which have seen a recent 400% surge, from four on Thursday to 19 by Saturday.
Continue reading...President Museveni promised much when he took power but, 34 years on, violence and poverty are rife
To survive as an opposition politician in Uganda, you have to hit the campaign trail wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet. You must be ready for war. Ugandan musician turned opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, discovered this when he decided to challenge incumbent Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s 34-year stranglehold on power at elections scheduled for 14 January. On the first day Kyagulanyi stepped out to campaign, he wore his vest over red overalls that made him look like a prisoner.
“I do not dress like this because I want to. I dress like this because there are people after my life. They think that by killing me, they will have it better. They do not know that if I die, it will only get worse,” he told the crowd outside his house.
Continue reading...Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land
Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.
“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.
Continue reading...The religious branch of the co-ruling PJD party described the move as ‘deplorable’
Morocco’s main Islamist groups rejected the government’s plan to normalise ties with Israel, following a deal brokered by the United States.
The religious branch of the co-ruling PJD party, the Unity and Reform Movement (MUR), said in a statement on Saturday the move was “deplorable” and denounced “all attempts at normalisation and the Zionist infiltration”.
Continue reading...About 400 pupils thought missing or kidnapped after gunmen stormed secondary school in Kankara
Bandits armed with assault rifles attacked a secondary school in Nigeria’s north-western Katsina state late on Friday, police said, and two local people told Reuters hundreds of students were missing.
The gunmen stormed the Government Science secondary school in Kankara district at about 9.40pm, and police at the scene returned fire, allowing some students to run for safety, police spokesman Gambo Isah said in a statement.
Continue reading...Concerns surface that people might avoid having jabs as result of comments by Mogoeng Mogoeng
South Africa’s chief justice has dismissed concerns that he may be endangering people’s health by linking coronavirus vaccines to a “satanic agenda”.
The comment by Mogoeng Mogoeng marked the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic that a senior judge had aired such preoccupations.
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