Africa - Page 31

South African public health officials announced on Thursday that they believe the surge in Chinese coronavirus cases fueled by the omicron variant in the country is ending, leaving a record of lower hospitalizations and severe cases than previous waves.

35,000 illegal migrants landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2021, an all-time record for arrivals.

Provincial elections held by Zimbabwe’s ruling socialist Zanu-PF party dissolved into chaos on Tuesday with widespread allegations of vote-rigging, plus confusing election rules that reduced voters to helpless frustration.

Members and associates of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a Marxist political party that ruled Ethiopia from 1991 to 2018, have engaged in human rights atrocities including gang rapes and mass killings of civilians in the ongoing Ethiopian Civil War, Reuters revealed on Tuesday.

A presumed Islamic terrorist blew himself up in a restaurant on Christmas Day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), killing five Christians and himself and injuring 14 more.

Tutu’s lasting legacy to South Africa and the world is the principle that oppressed people should equally obey principles of justice and human rights in their struggle. It was a principle he was to abandon in his later support for the Palestinians against Israel.

Pope Francis sent condolences Sunday for the death of South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, praising his witness in promoting racial equality.

Thousands of South Africans celebrated Christmas in Johannesburg and Cape Town this week despite a recent surge in omicron cases.

President Joe Biden announced Friday he will lift travel restrictions on eight African countries on December 31, attributing the decision to the fact that restricting international travel will not greatly affect the Wuhan coronavirus Omicron variant’s spread in the United States.

Nigeria’s federal government ceremonially destroyed more than 1 million doses of expired AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines this week, announcing on Wednesday that the action was designed in part to inspire vaccine-hesitant Nigerians to “have faith” in the nation’s state-run coronavirus inoculation drive, Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported.

Madagascar Police Minister Gen. Serge Gellé told reporters on Tuesday he swam for 12 consecutive hours in the Indian Ocean from Monday night through Tuesday morning until he reached a shore near Madagascar’s Mahambo town after he survived a helicopter crash that left him stranded in the sea, Sky News reported Thursday.

Coronavirus patients are “80 percent less likely to be hospitalized if they catch the omicron variant, compared with other strains,” Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing a study by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) released on Tuesday.

Jihadist Fulani terrorists killed at least 45 largely Christian Tiv farmers in central Nigeria’s Nasarawa state in recent days, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari confirmed Tuesday.

Libya’s High National Electoral Commission (HNEC) dissolved all of the country’s electoral committees on Tuesday, effectively canceling the presidential election that was scheduled for December 24.

African doctors and health officials on Tuesday denounced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for recommending Pfizer and Moderna vaccines above Johnson & Johnson, after it reported the J&J vaccine carries a small risk of causing blood clots.

The Chinese government is racking up favors from Third World leaders by intervening in conflict zones to offer economic support and security assistance, buying itself positions everywhere from Africa to the Middle East.

A WHO update on the Chinese coronavirus published this weekend cited South African case data and suggested that the rate of hospitalization for omicron may be 25% lower than for delta.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – A suspected pirate wounded during an exchange of gunfire last month with the Danish navy off West Africa has been transferred to a hospital in Ghana, authorities said.

Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, the last remaining African cardinal to head up a Vatican dicastery, announced Sunday he has tendered his resignation to Pope Francis.

“Eleven times fewer” Chinese coronavirus patients — or just 1.7 percent — were hospitalized for symptoms as part of South Africa’s latest wave of the Omicron variant compared to the 19 percent of coronavirus patients admitted to hospitals during South Africa’s equivalent summer wave of the Delta strain, South Africa’s Health Ministry told reporters on Friday, as reported by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Ghana’s government announced Monday it will fine airlines $3,500 per passenger if the traveler in question arrives in Ghana without proof of vaccination against the Chinese coronavirus, Africa News reported Tuesday.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli government on Wednesday said it was donating 1 million coronavirus vaccines to the U.N.-backed COVAX program.

Zimbabwe’s state power grid failed to meet national demand on Tuesday causing blackouts across “most parts of the country,” the online newspaper New Zimbabwe reported Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday urged Kenyan government authorities to drop a mandate requiring anyone seeking government services in Kenya to show proof of Chinese coronavirus vaccination, arguing the system undermines “basic rights.”

Nigeria’s aviation ministry announced plans on Sunday to ban incoming flights from the United Kingdom (U.K.), Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina starting this week in retaliation for flight bans on Nigeria ordered by those countries in recent days to prevent the spread of Omicron, a new coronavirus variant.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa tested positive for an undisclosed strain of the Chinese coronavirus on Sunday and was presenting “mild symptoms” of illness as of Monday, Reuters reported.

(AFP) — After nine years deployed in Mali, France is organising a drawdown, with troops preparing to leave the last of three bases in the far north of the insurgency-hit and poverty-wracked country.

The South African government is being urged to apologize to Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane after she finished in the top three of the Miss Universe competition in Israel on Sunday night — after her own country withdrew its support for her efforts because she would not boycott the Jewish state.

Miss South Africa Lalela Mswane said if she had listened to the anti-Israel haters and her own government and not come to Israel for the Miss Universe pageant, she would have regretted it for the rest of her life even though she’s been “to hell and back,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

South Africa, the most important democratic country on the African continent, is boycotting President Joe Biden’s two-day “democracy summit,” after the Biden administration slapped a hasty travel ban on the country due to the omicron variant.

The Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines, Teodoro Locsin, Jr., denounced on Tuesday the “breathtaking stupidity” of travel bans imposed on African countries following the discovery of the Omicron variant of Chinese coronavirus in late November.

South African Dr. Angelique Coetzee — who discovered a new variant of “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus, called Omicron last month in her patients — told the Africa News Agency (ANA) on Tuesday she considered the worldwide bans on travel out of southern Africa following Omicron’s emergence “knee-jerk” and short-sighted, given the lack of information about the strain.

The Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), the rebranded ISIS affiliate wing of Boko Haram, allegedly funnels roughly $43 million through official Nigerian financial institutions annually according to a new report by the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA).

An editorial in the government-owned newspaper Ghanaian Times published Monday accused President Joe Biden and other Western leaders of “mak[ing] Africa their whipping boy” by banning African travelers from entering their countries in response to the discovery of the “Omicron” variant of Chinese coronavirus.

An appeals court reinstated the presidential candidacy of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late dictator Muammar Qaddafi, after he was disqualified from running in this month’s Libyan presidential election.

The presidents of Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire joined South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for engagements on Wednesday and Thursday in solidarity following the imposition of a travel ban on that country by President Joe Biden and leaders of European and Middle Eastern states this week.