Polio outbreaks in Africa caused by mutation of strain in vaccine

New cases of highly infectious disease that should be ‘consigned to the history books’ reported in Nigeria, the DRC, CAR and Angola

New cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine have been reported in four African countries and more children are now being paralysed by vaccine-derived viruses than those infected by viruses in the wild, according to global health numbers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners identified nine new cases caused by the vaccine in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Angola last week. Along with seven other African countries with outbreaks, cases have also been reported in Asia. In Afghanistan and Pakistan polio remains endemic, and in Pakistan officials have been accused of covering up vaccine-related cases.

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Facebook removes Africa accounts linked to Russian troll factory

Fake networks in eight nations are connected to man allegedly behind disinformation empire

Facebook has taken down accounts linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin – the businessman allegedly behind Russia’s notorious troll factory – which were actively seeking to influence the domestic politics of a range of African countries.

The company said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of “inauthentic” Russian accounts. The Facebook pages targeted eight countries across the continent: Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya.

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Central African Republic considers hosting Russian military base

Kremlin denies discussion at Russia-Africa summit but CAR president says countries’ defence ministries were reviewing idea

The president of Central African Republic has said his country would consider hosting a Russian military base, as Vladimir Putin woos dozens of African leaders in an effort to spread Moscow’s influence at an investment summit in southern Russia.

In an interview with Russian state media, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra said he had also asked Russia for new weapons shipments for CAR’s soldiers, who have fought a civil war against rebel forces in the country since 2012. Asked about a potential military base, Russia’s first in Africa, he said that his government was “considering the possibilities”.

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Lake Chad shrinking? It’s a story that masks serious failures of governance | Oli Brown and Janani Vivekananda

Our two-year study shows the lake has been stable since the 1990s. Costly ‘solutions’ shift focus from the complex causes of the region’s deadly crisis

Lake Chad is a hydrological miracle – a life-giving, freshwater lake in the Sahara desert. But the region around the lake has been engulfed in a violent crisis for more than a decade, which has left nearly 10 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

Military crackdowns on insurgent groups such as Boko Haram have failed to end the violence. Bringing durable peace to the region requires unpicking a Gordian knot of many interlinked factors: poverty, sectarian mistrust, political marginalisation and corruption. The risks posed by the climate crisis to the rainfall-dependent livelihoods of the people of Lake Chad are an important strand of this challenge.

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The many faces of global hunger – in pictures

Lack of proper nutrition affects more than 150 million children worldwide, contributing to 3m deaths each year. In a series of images from Central African Republic, South Sudan and Liberia, part of a new exhibition in London, a trio of award-winning photographers set out to depict the issue in their own way

  • Names have been changed
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Violence forces 1.9 million children out of classes in west and central Africa

Unicef report points to three-fold increase in number of schools closed in the region in two years due to intensifying conflict

More than 1.9 million children are forced out of school across west and central Africa due to rising violence and insecurity, putting them at higher risk of recruitment by armed groups, the UN’s children agency has warned.

In an urgent report published on Friday, Unicef revealed that more than 9,000 schools have been shut down as of June this year in eight countries; Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

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In a world full of wars, why are so many of them ignored? | Simon Tisdall

Instability across central Africa has resulted in a humanitarian crisis. There needs to be greater focus on conflict resolution

Cameroon, a central African state of 24 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, is rarely in the news – which is surprising, given the awful things happening there. In a warring world full of conflict, the country’s troubles barely rate a mention. That’s short-sighted. As Yemen shows, today’s local difficulties have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s international crises.

Long-running tensions between Cameroon’s French and English-speaking communities came to a head last week with the arrest of at least 350 members of the main opposition party, whose leader has been jailed since January. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of using “excessive and indiscriminate force”.

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WWF accused of funding guards who ‘tortured and killed scores of people’

World Wide Fund for Nature launches inquiry into claims that it works with paramilitaries allegedly involved in serious abuses

One of the world’s largest charities has launched an investigation into claims that it funds, equips and works with paramilitary forces accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting and murdering scores of people in national parks across Africa and Asia.

Human rights specialists will lead an independent review of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) conservation charity, following allegations of abuse in six countries, published by BuzzFeed news on Monday.

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‘I feel alive again’: prosthetics and hope in Central African Republic | Saskia Houttuin

A clinic making artificial limbs in CAR – the country’s only centre of its kind – is changing lives devastated by conflict

Exaucé Bagaza can’t keep his eyes off his feet. A moment ago the five-year-old boy had one foot and now he has two: they are tucked into a pair of white tennis shoes adorned with flecks of green glitter.

Wobbling a little, the child presses his right hip on to his new leg, a prosthesis made of polypropylene. His physiotherapist leans forward, reaching for his hands: “Come here,” he says.

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‘These children are crucial’: teaching forgiveness in CAR’s besieged camps

With peace talks starting this week in Khartoum, a quarter of the population of the Central African Republic have had to leave their homes – some into camps where makeshift teaching facilities offer hope to a potentially lost generation

Marie was fast asleep when the rebels came. “They wanted to kill all the men,” she says, “and to destroy our homes.”

Three militants burst into her room then moved to the next house, leaving her screaming in terror but unscathed. In a conflict zone where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war, other girls were less fortunate that night. She was just 12.

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Gallup’s Happiness Poll finds Americans aren’t very

By the usual measurements of economic growth , unemployment and standard poll questions on intent, professionals and many others were pretty certain the United Kingdom would decide to remain in the EU that it fought so long and hard to enter. Turns out, if media had measured "Happiness," they'd have recognized the historic looming Brexit upheaval.

Peacekeeping: Fiction vs. Reality

The word peacekeeping is like the word terrorism: it is meaningless on its own and able to be molded to serve the interests of a political clique. Like Alex P. Schmidt's description of terrorism in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research , peacekeeping "is usually an instrument for the attempted realization of a politicala project that perpetrators lacking mass support are seeking."