Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Spain logged another record number of new infections on Wednesday afternoon, recording 41,576 new cases in the preceding 24 hours and bringing the country’s total caseload to 2,412,318. It also recorded 464 deaths.
The new record came five days after the previous single-day high of 40,197 new cases.
Health authorities in Madrid have started mass testing hundreds of young people for Covid-19 at universities in a bid to detect asymptomatic carriers.
Paternalism and racism must be tackled if the EU is to rebuild trust with a young, economically dynamic continent
Black Lives Matter protests last summer sparked an uncomfortable reckoning for many European nations with a legacy of slavery and colonialism.
Excavating this dark history via revised school curriculums and initiatives such as Black History Month is difficult. But it is badly needed, and not just to dispel the self-congratulatory and entirely false narratives about Europe’s “civilisational” past still being driven by nationalist and populist politicians.
Almost a quarter of Lesotho’s population will require food aid between January and March as a result of Covid-19 restrictions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.
More than 580,000 people out of a population of 2.2 million are estimated to be food insecure, despite predictions of normal to above average rains this year and the potential for above average cereal production.
The musician and youngest son of the Afrobeat legend has been galvanised to act after police brutality in Nigeria
“For 60 years nothing has really been solved in this country,” Seun Kuti says. “Healthcare, education, electricity, transportation, welfare – nothing has been accomplished.”
Galvanised by the brutality meted out by Nigerian police against protesters in October last year, the 37-year-old Grammy-nominated musician and youngest son of the Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti resurrected his father’s socialist political party, the Movement of the People. Against a backdrop of widespread and mounting frustration over how Nigeria is run, he hopes the MOP can be a vehicle for change in 2021.
The world is on the edge of a “catastrophic moral failure” in the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, with just 25 doses administered across all poor countries compared with 39m in wealthier ones, the head of the World Health Organization has said.
It was the sharpest warning so far from Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the dangers of vaccine hoarding since inoculations started being administered in 49 mostly high-income countries.
Hauliers require a negative Covid-19 test before travelling from Britain to Denmark and the Netherlands, the UK government has said.
Last week the French government said people travelling from non-EU countries to France will no longer be allowed to enter by presenting a negative result from a quick Covid-19 test, but cross-Channel truck drivers would be exempt.
Nigeria has written to the African Union to request 10 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to supplement the COVAX programme and has allocated $26 million for licensed vaccine production, the health minister said.
Nigeria, like other countries across Africa, is grappling with a second wave of coronavirus. As of Monday, Nigeria, the continent’s most populous country of 200 million inhabitants, had 110,387 confirmed cases and 1,435 deaths.
As opposition leader’s home is surrounded by army and police he says he fears for his life
The party of the Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine says it is preparing to challenge President Yoweri Museveni’s election victory as it condemned what it called the house arrest of Wine and his wife.
Amid growing international concern about the conduct of the election, Wine said in an interview from his house, where he is surrounded by army and police, that he was “worried about my life and the life of my wife”.
Wooden sarcophagi discovered at site south of Cairo along with funerary temple of Queen Naert
Egypt has announced the discovery of a new trove of treasures at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, including an ancient funerary temple.
The tourism and antiquities ministry said the “major discoveries” made by a team of archaeologists headed by the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass also included more than 50 sarcophagi.
The president ‘shut down’ the internet as he won the election. You don’t stay in power for 40 years by taking risks
Days before Uganda’s presidential election – voting took place last Thursday – the incumbent, 76-year-old Yoweri Museveni, ordered that social media be switched off. People found their way around that by using virtual private networks, bouncing back online with memes mocking the idea that anyone would think it possible to bar people from being on social media in this day and age. Then, the evening before elections, the internet in Uganda was totally shut down.
The election that saw Museveni win with nearly 60% was shrouded in darkness. It is strange to move from social media’s infinite flow of information to nothingness. Instead, just silence apart from the news the government wants you to hear. Media houses that dare not to toe the government’s straight line risk being stopped from covering elections or even shut down.
Opposition candidate urges citizens to reject result of ‘most fraudulent election in country’s history’
Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, won a sixth term in office on Saturday, extending his 35-year-rule in one of the country’s most turbulent election campaigns while his main rival Bobi Wine alleged widespread fraud and rejected the result.
Museveni won 59% of the vote, consolidating his grip on power and becoming one of the world’s longest serving leaders. Wine won 35%, according to the electoral commission’s final results from Thursday’s poll.
Bobi Wine, the Ugandan opposition leader, said soldiers were attacking his home. 'Our lives are in danger,' Wine said. 'Our only security is letting the world know what is happening.'
Lt Col Deo Akiiki, Uganda’s deputy military spokesperson, said the soldiers were at Wine’s house to protect him
Pfizer’s reduction of its COVID-19 vaccine shipments will not delay Canada’s goal of getting most people inoculated by the end of September, the country’s procurement minister said as the country battled a second surge in infections.
“This is a temporary delay and we remain on track to have enough approved vaccines for everyone who wishes to get vaccinated by the end of September 2021,” Procurement Minister Anita Anand said.
Pre-prepared disaster plans for handling pandemics, natural disasters and terrorist attacks show London had 3,500 mortuary spaces. But the capital braced for the virus with an additional 12,000 mortuary spaces.
If cemeteries could not cope, bodies would be frozen to await their final committal. There were plans to transport scores of bodies at a time between storage locations in trucks, the official said, a practice that risks misidentifying or even losing the dead:
England’s high street pharmacies will begin rolling out Covid vaccines, as the virus death toll across the UK climbed above 100,000.
Boots and Superdrug branches will be among the six stores across England which will be able to administer the jabs from Thursday while the Government aims to hit its target of vaccinating all people in the four most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month.
Andrews Pharmacy in Macclesfield, Cullimore Chemist in Edgware, north London, Woodside Pharmacy in Telford and Appleton Village pharmacy in Widnes will be in the first group to hand out the injections, alongside Boots in Halifax, and Superdrug in Guildford.
Boris Johnson also told MPs that distribution “will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can” but said supply of doses remained the main barrier.
The Scottish Government published its vaccine delivery plan on Wednesday evening, including details of how many doses it expects to receive for each week until the end of May, prompting a row with London, which has declined to publish its numbers.
The six pharmacies have been picked because they can deliver large volumes of the vaccine and allow for social distancing, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was “fantastic” that jabs would be available on the high street.
“Pharmacies sit at the heart of local communities and will make a big difference to our rollout programme by providing even more local, convenient places for those that are eligible to get their jab,” he said.
By the end of the month more than 200 community chemists will be able to give vaccines, according to NHS England.
The pharmacies join the 200 hospitals, around 800 GP clinics and seven mass vaccination centres where jabs are already being handed out.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer urged ministers to go further and use England’s 11,500 pharmacies to deliver round-the-clock vaccinations by the end of next month.
The expanded vaccination service in England comes as the daily reported UK death toll reached a new high on Wednesday, with 1,564 fatalities recorded within 28 days of a positive test.
The latest figures meant the grim milestone of more than 100,000 deaths involving coronavirus has now been passed in the UK, according to official data.
Bobi Wine’s challenge to Yoweri Museveni seen as emblem of Africa-wide generation gap
Ugandans have cast their votes after one of the most keenly watched and violent election campaigns in a generation, as the pop star turned politician Bobi Wine tries to unseat Yoweri Museveni from his 34-year rule.
Delays were seen in the delivery of polling materials in some places, including where Wine voted in the capital and opposition stronghold of Kampala. After he arrived to the cheers of a crowd and cast his ballot, Wine made the sign of the cross and then raised his fist and smiled. He said he was confident of victory.
Stella Nyanzi is Uganda's most outspoken, self-described radical queer feminist. She has been imprisoned for her activism and is known for her attention-grabbing naked protests and poetry. In an election campaign that has become increasingly violent, Nyanzi is standing to be the elected MP for Kampala, as part of the growing nationwide opposition to the 35-year presidency of Yoweri Museveni.
With most attention focused on Museveni's presidential challenger Bobi Wine, Nyanzi is on the streets and in the media campaigning for her own votes. She vows that, unlike other women who have been elected, she will not forget her commitment to feminism if she wins
A dealer who dreams of discovering the source of a mystical substance that lets you see the future heads deep into Africa
Drug smuggler Hugo (Nicolas Fagerberg) has “the connect”. Or he’d like to think he does. Certainly this debut feature from British director Dan Moss knows several good spots, guiding us through a series of impressive locations with the confidence of a seasoned traveller. After Hugo’s big-money hashish deal in a partly flooded Mumbai building site goes wrong, he’s introduced to Bulu, a blue-powdered hallucinogen with mystical properties. “They say it makes you see the future,” says his go-between (Ashish Verma). Could this mysterious substance make Hugo enough money to satisfy his UK-based bosses? He’ll have to track down a supply source first.
Everything about the London drug world that Hugo then stops off in – from the 80s punk get-ups of the big players to the readiness with which these supposedly shrewd operators approve Hugo’s wild goose chase – is risibly unrealistic. But he’s soon en route to “Fort Lugard, Uganda”, where the plot is on safer ground.
One of Africa’s most prominent literary figures says the election will be crucial for the continent
Global outrage at the storming of the US Capitol risks diverting attention from repression by Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka has said on the eve of Uganda’s election.
Soyinka, a Nobel laureate and one of Africa’s most prominent literary figures, described Thursday’s election as “crucial for the African continent”, and called for the 76-year-old Museveni and other older African leaders to step aside for a younger generation.
US plans to open a consulate in Western Sahara mark a turning point for the disputed territory. US recognition of Morocco’s authority over the land frustrates indigenous Sahrawis seeking independence but others see the future US consulate as a boost for Western Sahara cities like Dakhla