President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo signs new penal code for central African country
Equatorial Guinea, one of the world’s most authoritarian countries, has abolished the death penalty, according to state television, which cited a new law signed by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
Capital punishment was “totally abolished” in the oil-rich central African country after the president signed a new penal code, the vice-president tweeted on Monday.
Continue reading...Floods have affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency says
Nigeria is battling its worst floods in a decade with more than 300 people killed in 2022 including at least 20 this week, as authorities said the situation is “beyond our control.”
The floods in 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states and capital city have affected half a million people, including 100,000 displaced and more than 500 injured, Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said.
Continue reading...From Melbourne to Paris, New York to Delhi, the solemn events in London resonated around the globe
As the doors to Westminster Abbey opened to allow guests to take their seats, across the other side of the world, Australians sat down in front of their TVs to watch the historic event.
Continue reading...PM Narendra Modi to welcome the eight animals amid fears that they may struggle with Kuno national park habitat or clash with leopards
Eight Namibian cheetahs have been airlifted to India, part of an ambitious project to reintroduce the big cats after they were driven to extinction there decades ago, officials and vets said.
The wild cheetahs were moved by road from a game park north of the Namibian capital of Windhoek on Friday to board a chartered Boeing 747 dubbed “Cat plane” for an 11-hour flight.
Continue reading...At least 400 Chadian workers rounded up in east Libyan town of Ajdabiya after security forces in Chad arrest four Libyan poachers
Hundreds of Chadians are being rounded up and detained on the streets of a Libyan town for a ninth day in retaliation for the Chad government’s arrest of four Libyan men on suspicion of poaching endangered animals.
At least 400 people have now been arrested in the city of Ajdabiya by a militia linked to the warlord Khalifa Haftar, commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army.
Continue reading...Economists accuse bondholders of standing to make huge profits at the expense of the crisis-hit country
More than 100 economists and academics have urged international lenders to crisis-stricken Zambia to write off a significant slice of their loans during financial restructuring talks this month.
Zambia is seeking up to $8.4bn (£7.3bn) in debt relief from major lenders, including private funds run by the world’s largest investment manager, BlackRock, to help put its public finances back in order.
Continue reading...Charity says 19 million people facing starvation in report highlighting link with extreme weather
Extreme hunger is closely linked to the climate crisis, with many areas of the world most affected by extreme weather experiencing severe food shortages, research has shown.
The development charity Oxfam examined 10 of the world’s worst climate hotspots, afflicted by drought, floods, severe storms and other extreme weather, and found their rates of extreme hunger had more than doubled in the past six years.
Continue reading...Groups urge action during the talks in Egypt to demand climate justice for Africa and the global south
Civil society groups around the world are calling for a global day of action on the climate catastrophe, to urge governments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and shift to a low-carbon economy.
The day of action will take place on Saturday 12 November, at the mid-point of the Cop27 UN climate talks, which run from 6 to 18 November in Sharm el-Sheikh, hosted by the Egyptian government.
Continue reading...The former school principal was abducted during a medical mission in Bukina Faso in a case that drew international attention
A Catholic nun from New Orleans who was kidnapped while working in western Africa, contracted malaria as she was held for nearly five months and was ultimately freed, said reciting prayers helped her survive her ordeal.
“Prayer sustained me,” Suellen Tennyson, 83 and a former principal of a Catholic elementary school, told the in-house newspaper of the New Orleans archdiocese. “That was the thing that kept me going because I had nothing.”
Continue reading...NGOs want investigation into border counter-terrorism operation that allegedly ended up bombing suspected smugglers
Two international NGOs have asked French prosecutors and the UN to investigate the French state’s involvement in Egypt allegedly committing crimes against humanity in a secret military operation on the Egyptian-Libyan border.
A 2021 leak appeared to show how French officers complained they were being asked to facilitate Egyptian airstrikes, codenamed Operation Sirli, on the Egyptian-Libyan border, even though the original counter-terrorism purpose had been subverted by the Egyptian military into taking out vehicles containing nothing more than contraband. Dozens are estimated to have been killed or injured.
Continue reading...Politicians pay warm tributes but memories of colonial atrocities prompt fierce criticism too
In 1952, the then Princess Elizabeth was on a royal tour with Prince Philip at Treetops lodge in Kenya. Unknown to them at the time, she would receive news of her father’s death during that visit, and the forest lodge would long be remembered as the place where Britain’s longest-serving monarch “went to sleep a princess and awoke a queen”.
Just two years after her visit, the Mau Mau, Kenyan freedom fighters opposed to British colonial rule, burned the lodge down. It was rebuilt in 1957, and older residents who live along the long and winding path to the lodge remembered her second visit to the area in 1983 fondly, saying it had placed their neighbourhood on the map. But Treetops was not open for the end of the Queen’s life. It closed its doors last year after a dive in tourism during the pandemic forced it out of business.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Labour peer calls on US president to follow UK in banning firm over misconduct in South Africa
Joe Biden should follow the UK in banning the global management consultancy firm Bain & Company from future government contracts, the Labour peer Peter Hain has said.
In a letter shared with the Guardian, the former minister and anti-apartheid campaigner urged the US president to “act on this matter and establish a clear precedent that will signal to all US global companies, consultancies, lawyers, auditors and financial advisers that collusion with corrupt politicians and their business cronies in other countries will not be tolerated”.
Continue reading...Police blamed the accident, in which passengers burned to death, on speeding and reckless driving
At least 20 passengers burned to death when a bus collided with another vehicle and caught fire in south-west Nigeria, police and an official have said.
The accident at Lanlate in the Ibarapa area of Oyo state on Friday, is the latest road crash in the vast west African nation of 210 million people.
Continue reading...American commentators, academics and others are calling into reconsideration of monarchy’s lasting influences
The death of Queen Elizabeth II revived longstanding criticism in the US over the monarchy’s enrichment from the British empire’s violent colonization of African, Asian and Caribbean nations and their diasporas.
Since her death on Thursday, American commentators, academics, and a former US diplomat, among others, took to social media and elsewhere to call for fully wrestling with the British monarchy’s lasting influence in light of the monarch’s death.
Continue reading...Documents disclosed to high court case show repeated warnings about asylum processing plan
Until the then home secretary Priti Patel and Rwanda’s foreign minister, Vincent Biruta, sat together at a table in Kigali on 14 April and signed a deal to send asylum seekers to the east African country, few thought the agreement would actually happen.
Rumours had swirled for months about the controversial plans but nothing had come of previous Home Office ideas, both confirmed and unconfirmed, to halt the growing number of asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats, including wave machines in the Channel and a policy to turn around dinghies.
Continue reading...Chance to eradicate diseases such as malaria could be lost and UK innovation squandered if global health investment is cut, jab co-creator tells PM
The co-inventor of a groundbreaking vaccine that could eradicate malaria has implored Liz Truss not to squander cutting-edge UK innovation by “turning off the taps” on global health funding.
Speaking as successful results from the latest trials of the R21 vaccine were revealed, Prof Adrian Hill, director of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, said it would be tragic if Britain cut funding just as scientists were poised to make “a real impact” against malaria.
Continue reading...Spectators shout in apparent glee as dignitaries struggle to get off crumpled structure during launch
Dignitaries gathered to inaugurate a footbridge in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo only for the structure to collapse beneath their feet to the barely concealed delight of onlookers, a video shows.
Just as an organiser cut the ribbon at the ceremony in Mont-Ngafula district in Kinshasa, the bridge buckled, both its handrails broke off and the central section slumped into a stream a couple of metres below.
Continue reading...Families demand DNA tests to identify if their relatives are among thousands of unclaimed bodies in hospital morgues
The families of those missing after three years of political unrest in Sudan are to meet government officials to discuss how to bury more than 3,000 unclaimed bodies in the country’s mortuaries.
Last week, the government announced plans to dig mass graves as Sudan’s senior public prosecutor said mortuaries were overcrowded, many remains were decaying and they needed to be cleared.
Continue reading...Governor of the Sahel region in restive north says military-led convoy carrying supplies was hit by improvised explosive device
At least 35 civilians have been killed and 37 wounded when a convoy carrying supplies in Burkina Faso’s jihadist-hit north struck an improvised explosive device, the governor of the Sahel region has said.
The landlocked African state is in the grip of a seven-year insurgency that has claimed more than 2,000 lives and forced 1.9 million people to leave their homes.
Continue reading...Court dismisses opposition’s challenge against August’s vote that alleged fraud and voter suppression
Kenya’s supreme court has confirmed William Ruto as winner of the country’s disputed national vote, ending weeks of political uncertainty after the opposition – and election officials – questioned the count.
Ruto was announced winner on 15 August amid a divide within the electoral commission over the declared outcome, which showed that the vice-president had gained 50.5% of the vote, beating the longtime opposition leader, Raila Odinga, and narrowly avoiding a runoff.
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