Cause of death of 21 young people at Enyobeni tavern last month still yet to be determined
Investigators have found traces of the toxic chemical methanol in the bodies of 21 teenagers who died in a nightclub in South Africa last month.
The tragedy at the Enyobeni tavern in the poor Scenery Park township in the coastal city of East London on 26 June caused shock and grief in a nation used to seeing casualties from a widespread culture of heavy drinking.
Continue reading...Prospect of Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Khalifa Haftar burying differences may be welcomed by UN
Libya’s prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, has made an unexpected alliance with his former enemy, the eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar, in a bid to cement a fragile ceasefire and end a months-long oil blockade.
Less than three years ago, Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) besieged Tripoli in a failed attempt to capture the capital. On Monday, in a highly symbolic gesture, LNA’s chief of staff, Abdulrazek al-Nadoori, was invited to visit the city for talks.
Continue reading...No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which can spread from infected animals such as bats
Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation.
Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus.
Continue reading...Latest findings suggest Rwandan government has deployed surveillance campaign against relatives of Paul Rusesabagina
The mobile phone of a Belgian citizen who is the nephew of Paul Rusesabagina, a jailed critic of the Rwandan government made famous by his portrayal in Hotel Rwanda, was hacked nearly a dozen times in 2020 using Israeli-made surveillance technology, according to forensic experts at The Citizen Lab.
The findings follow earlier revelations by the Guardian and other media partners in the Pegasus Project, an investigation of Israel’s NSO Group, that Rusesabagina’s daughter, a dual American-Belgian national named Carine Kanimba, was under near-constant surveillance by a client of NSO Group from January to mid-2021, when the hacking attack was discovered by researchers at Amnesty International’s security lab.
Continue reading...Fighting between the Hausa and Birta ethnic groups broke out last week over the killing of a farmer
The death toll from days of tribal clashes in the southern Sudanese state of Blue Nile has climbed to at least 65 people, according to a senior health official.
Around 150 people have been injured in the fighting between the Hausa and Birta ethnic groups, the state’s health minister, Gamal Nasser al-Sayed, said.
Continue reading...First continent-wide meeting aims to set out plans to halt and reverse habitat and species loss in protected areas on land and sea
African leaders will gather in the Rwandan capital this week for the first continent-wide meeting to set out plans for the conservation of nature across Africa.
The IUCN Africa Protected Areas Congress (Apac) in Kigali will attract close to 3,000 delegates, including protected area directors from the continent’s 54 countries, youth leaders and Indigenous and community representatives, to discuss the role of protected areas in conserving nature, promoting sustainable development, and safeguarding the continent’s wildlife.
Continue reading...Despite court hearing, Home Office continues to claim UNHCR is supportive of controversial scheme
The Home Office has been accused of misrepresenting the UN refugee agency’s stance on sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, in a new disagreement between the two organisations, the Guardian has learned.
The Home Office and UNHCR have clashed previously over the safety and suitability of the Home Office’s policy of forcibly removing some asylum seekers who have recently arrived in the UK on small boats or in the back of lorries to Rwanda to have their claims processed there.
Continue reading...Kelvin Bilal Fawaz reveals how Farah’s TV interview was a reminder of how his own boxing career was lost to life in immigration limbo
A prodigious talent with the drive and ambition to make it all the way to the top, when Kelvin Bilal Fawaz got the chance to represent Team GB as a boxer at the 2012 Olympics in London it was a dream come true.
Trafficked as a child from Nigeria to the UK and forced into domestic servitude, Fawaz had the opportunity for Olympic glory in the place he now called home.
Continue reading...US adviser to the White House and partner call on UN to move climate crisis summit over fears they would be targeted
A White House adviser and his partner have called on the United Nations to move a key climate change summit from Egypt due to the country’s treatment of LGBTQ people, citing fears that they and other activists would be targeted by security forces if they attend the talks.
The couple, Jerome Foster and Elijah Mckenzie-Jackson, have written to Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to condemn the choice of Egypt as host of the Cop27 talks due to its “LGBTQ+ torture, woman slaughter and civil rights suppression” and that the decision “places our life in danger in the process of advocating for the life of our planet”.
Continue reading...Streaming company’s family drama marks shift from locally made ‘edutainment’ to shows that reflect complex realities of Kenyan life
Kenya’s first homegrown Netflix series, the family drama Country Queen, has its premiere on Friday, marking the beginning of a significant investment in African film by the streaming company.
Shot in English, Swahili and a mix of other local languages, the series features a female lead character and chronicles the lives of ordinary Kenyans fighting against corporate power and land grabs. It explores urban and rural Kenya through characters intertwined by love, betrayal and conflict.
Continue reading...Phenomenon at Lake Kivu happens when CO2 from volcanic activity leaks through cracks in the ground
The Swahili word mazuku means roughly “evil wind” and refers to a lethal phenomenon around Lake Kivu on the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
Carbon dioxide from volcanic activity leaks from cracks in the ground. The gas is heavier than air and collects in hollows, cellars, and low-lying areas, forming invisible and sometimes deadly pools, especially on windless nights. High concentrations of CO2 produce dizziness, nausea, confusion and weakness. Unwary victims who do not leave immediately tend to collapse then die in the high concentration of gas close to the ground.
Continue reading...Cambridge doctoral student Oliver Barker-Vormawor says ‘trauma is still there’ as he files lawsuit
A prominent Ghanaian activist has accused authorities of subjecting him to a violent assault and illegal detention after he criticised the government in a series of Facebook posts.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge who founded the prominent “fix the country” protest movement, was arrested after he landed at Kotoka airport in Accra in February on a flight from the UK.
Continue reading...Campaigners say sentence amounts to torture amid fears that country’s new regime is rolling back women’s rights
A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the first known case in the country for almost a decade.
Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, 20, was arrested by police in Sudan’s White Nile state last month.
Continue reading...Eleven nations least responsible for global heating must spend up to 22% of GDP on dealing with effects of it
African countries that are the least responsible for the climate crisis will have to spend up to five times more on adapting to global heating than they do on healthcare.
Analysis of 11 nations with a total population of more than 350 million lays bare the huge financial toll of taking action to avert the severe environmental consequences of global heating.
Continue reading...Banks and traders have been ‘let off the hook’ by G7 despite being more to blame for the looming crisis than China
Western governments should “compel” private lenders to ease loan repayments from low-income countries to tackle a debt crisis, according to campaigners.
Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said African governments owe three times more debt to western banks, asset managers and oil traders than they do to China, and are charged double the interest. China has been “mistakenly” blamed by western leaders for the failure to make progress on debt restructuring.
Continue reading...Attack on tavern near Johannesburg in which 15 were killed was one of several similar incidents over the weekend
Campaigners in South Africa have called for a crackdown on increasingly powerful organised criminals armed with military-grade weapons, blamed for a string of recent deadly attacks.
Police are looking for suspected gang members who killed 15 people in a tavern near Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital, using an assault rifle and 9mm pistols on Saturday night.
Continue reading...Police investigating if attacks linked, citing similarities as gunmen in both cases said to have fired at people ‘randomly’
Four people have been killed and eight wounded in a bar in eastern South Africa after two men fired indiscriminately at customers, police said, on the same night as a bar shooting in Soweto left 15 dead.
Police were trying to verify if the attacks were linked, they said, noting their similarity.
Continue reading...South African police investigate reports group of men arrived in taxi and opened fire on patrons
Gunmen used automatic rifles and powerful handguns to kill 15 people and injure a further eight in a mass shooting at a tavern in Johannesburg’s Soweto township in the early hours of Sunday.
The attack in the Nomzamo informal settlement occurred shortly after midnight when a group of men arrived in a Toyota minibus and entered the bar, neighbours told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Dos Santos’s near-four-decade rule was marked by brutal civil war lasting almost three decades
Angola’s former president José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79.
Dos Santos died at the Teknon clinic in Barcelona, Spain, where he was being treated following a prolonged illness, the presidency said.
Continue reading...‘I went to help people,’ says Togolese boy, who was among 71 survivors rescued nine days after boat sank, killing at least 30
The actions of a teenager from Togo have been lauded after video footage was published of him supporting a baby he saved from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea last week in which at least 30 people died.
The 17-year-old, whose identity has not been disclosed, swam to save the child, whom he was holding above water when a rescue team arrived, in footage published by the French media group Brut.
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