Africa

Mercury hits new highs as heat waves scorch the globe

ATHENS, July 17, 2023 (AFP) – Temperatures reached new highs on Monday as heatwaves and wildfires scorched swathes of the Northern Hemisphere, forcing the evacuation of 1,200 children close to a Greek seaside resort. Health authorities have sounded alarms from North America to Europe and Asia, urging people to stay hydrated and shelter from the burning sun, in a stark reminder of the effects of global warming. Near Athens, a forest fire flared in strong […]

Mediator calls for ‘peaceful resolution’ of DRC conflict

GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) — Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, a mediator in the conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, appealed again on Wednesday for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The former Kenyan president was speaking at a meeting in the eastern city of Goma in the conflict-torn region. “We are not here to open new negotiations,” he told journalists after having met the Congolese authorities, UN representatives and western diplomats. […]

Nigeria’s new leader pushes regional role and domestic reform

By Patrick MARKEY Agence France-Presse LAGOS, Nigeria (AFP) — Just a month in power, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has already received foreign entrepreneurs and investors at his villa, telling them Nigeria is open for business after a flurry of surprise economic reforms. The former Lagos governor added a diplomatic step this week, becoming chairman of the West Africa bloc ECOWAS, with a call for more democracy and cooperation in the region wracked by coups and […]

Sudan civil servants go hungry as war claims livelihoods

WAD MADANI, Sudan (AFP) — Sudanese public school teacher Imad Mohammed had worked for 32 years when war broke out almost three months ago, tearing his country apart and his finances to shreds. “We only eat one meal a day now,” he told AFP about his family of five. “And we don’t know how long this will go on,” said the teacher from Al-Jazirah state, which has been spared the brutal fighting but has still […]

Curfew in central Nigeria state after new attacks

JOS, Nigeria, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – Nigeria has imposed a 24-hour curfew in a north-central region after more tit-for-tat attacks killed at least another nine people. The move, introduced Sunday in Mangu district in Plateau State, followed two months of clashes between nomadic herders and pastoral farmers that community leaders say have left more than 200 dead. Intercommunal violence often flares in Plateau, which straddles the dividing line between Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and […]

We may be underestimating the climate risk to crops: researchers

PARIS, July 4, 2023 (AFP) – The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and highly exposed to the effects of climate change, with climate and crop models used to figure out just what the impacts could […]

Alarm over new ‘war crimes’ in Sudan’s Darfur region

KHARTOUM, June 28, 2023 (AFP) — Sudan’s war has brought painful memories back to the troubled Darfur region where armed groups are accused of ethnically targeting civilians, sparking fears of a new “genocide”. “They burned every house in the neighborhood and killed my brother in front of me,” recounted one survivor, Inaam, who fled the western region for neighboring Chad. Her harrowing escape took her through streets “littered with bodies”, said the human rights defender […]

Football pitch of tropical forest lost every 5 seconds

PARIS, June 27, 2023 (AFP) – Earth lost an area of carbon-absorbing rainforest larger than Switzerland or the Netherlands in 2022, most of it destroyed to make way for cattle and commodity crops, an analysis of satellite data released Tuesday revealed. That is nearly a football pitch of mature tropical trees felled or burned every five seconds, night and day, and 10 percent more than the year before, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). […]

Hunger devastates Ethiopia’s Tigray as food aid halted

By Ammu KANNAMPILLY Agence France-Presse NAIROBI, June 23, 2023 (AFP) — Her nephew shared the harrowing tale of how she died. The 45-year-old mother of five had not eaten in days and begged for a sip of water as she lay dying in a hospital in Ethiopia’s war-scarred Tigray region. She struggled to swallow, her muscles weakened from prolonged starvation, as droplets dribbled down her chin, he said. She died four days later — the […]

Sudan no closer to peace as another breached truce ends

KHARTOUM, June 21, 2023 (AFP) – The Sudanese capital was again under fire Wednesday, after the latest breached ceasefire between warring generals ended without any sign of an end to more than two months of war. An immense fire had already engulfed the intelligence service’s headquarters in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday evening, with each side accusing the other of attacking it in violation of the 72-hour truce mediated by the United States and Saudi […]

UN warns not time to ‘take our eyes off’ South Sudan

UNITED NATIONS, United States (AFP) — The conflict in Sudan, which has shown how quickly “hard-won peace gains” can unravel, should not distract attention from the risks facing neighboring South Sudan, the UN envoy to the country warned Tuesday. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into a civil war that left nearly 400,000 people dead and millions displaced between 2013 and 2018. A peace agreement signed in 2018 provided a power-sharing […]

UN sounds alarm on worsening hunger in DR Congo

GENEVA, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – The United Nations sounded the alarm Tuesday over the worsening hunger situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying time, money and resources to help were all running short. The UN’s World Food Programme said around 25.8 million people will face acute food insecurity this year in the DR Congo — roughly a quarter of the vast central African nation’s population, and the highest number of food insecure people […]