News & Announcements

Somalia on Tuesday banned street protests citing Covid-19, in what could raise another possibility of confrontations with opposition groups.

The announcement by the Ministry of Security indicated the rising number of infections had forced authorities to shut the door on any street marches.

But it came a day after opposition presidential contenders announced they will hold protests in Mogadishu on Friday to criticise President Mohamed Farmaajo for delaying elections.

Somalia, facing an electoral impasse has seen cases of Covid-19 rise significantly this month, forcing the Ministry of Health to order wearing of masks in public as well as ban public gatherings. The country had reported 6,246 cases by Monday, with 208 deaths and 3778 recoveries.

A statement issued by the Security Ministry said “appropriate measures” will be taken against those who defy the ban including arrests.

“In the last 24 hours, 229 news cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed, bringing the total positive cases recorded in the country to 6246,” the ministry said.

Politically though, the ban apparently targeted a group of opposition presidential contenders are known as the Council of Presidential Candidates.

Last week, their protest was disrupted after security forces shot at protesters. The government later said the opposition had utilised an armed militia to attack security forces, while the group claimed there was an assassination attempt on their members.

Senator Ilyas Ali Hassan said on Tuesday that the planned “peaceful” protests will be held as announced.

“We will continue to fight for our constitutional rights until timely, peaceful, transparent and inclusive elections are held,” he said.

Mr Hassan is Secretary of Himilo-Qaran party, the party of ex-President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the chairman of the Council of Presidential Candidates

Addressing the UN Security Council on Monday, Somalia’s Foreign and International Cooperation Minister Mohamed Abdirazak said his government will respect individuals’ rights to protest, as long as there is peace.

“Rest assured, the prospective presidential candidates have and will continue to be provided the freedom and political space to express their views and government bodies. Security forces will fulfil their statutory duty to protect the public against the dark forces of extremism and the silent enemy of the pandemic while they express their views openly,” he told a session of the UNSC on Monday night.

“However, the security and wellbeing of the Somali people will remain paramount and no armed insurrection under the guise of a political demonstration will be accepted.”

The opposition group, as well as Jubbaland and Puntland federal states, have refused to engage with President Farmaajo, accusing him of overstaying in power and deliberately delaying elections.

The two sides disagreed on implementing an agreement signed on September 17 last year between the federal government and five federal states; Hirshabelle, South West, Puntland, Jubbaland and Galmudug.

Two African countries of Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Xinhua News Agency reports, have reported 14 Ebola virus cases and nine deaths so far, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Monday.

Africa CDC, the specialised healthcare agency of the 55-member African Union, reported a fatality rate of 64.3 percent in the two countries.

Since the last report, one new confirmed case, two new deaths and no new recoveries have been reported in the DRC, the Africa CDC said, adding that three new suspected cases were reported in N’zerekore, Guinea.

Africa CDC, which emphasized that the number of Ebola cases and deaths mainly included cumulative probable and confirmed ones stressed that the official figures showed that the DRC had seven cases and four deaths while Guinea had seven cases and five deaths.

According to the Africa CDC, neither of the Ebola virus-affected countries has so far reported recoveries.

New outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus disease in the two African countries are sending new jitters to Africa as the continent is still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Africa CDC last week announced that it would deploy an emergency response support team of experts in Guinea to help the country fight the new Ebola outbreak.

Africa CDC also said that it will call for an emergency meeting of experts to better coordinate emergency responses in Guinea and in neighbouring countries across the region, in collaboration with the West African Health Organization.

The 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola virus outbreak claimed over 11,300 lives, with over 28,600 recorded cases.

Ebola is a highly contagious hemorrhagic fever that causes a range of symptoms including fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, generalized pain or malaise and in many cases internal and external bleeding.

China has revealed that four of its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers were killed during a bloody hand-to-hand battlewith Indian troops on the two countries’ disputed borderhigh in the Himalayas in June 2020.

The two sides fought with fists, zones and nailed-studded bamboo poles, fists, in what was the deadliest border clash between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in more than 40 years. New Delhi previously said at least 20 Indian soldiers died during the brawl in the Galwan Valley area.

On Friday, China’s official army newspaper, PLA Daily, said battalion commander, Chen Hongjun, and three soldiers — Chen Xiangrong, Xiao Siyuan and Wang Zhuoran — had died in the “fierce struggle” defending the border and were given posthumous awards.

An award was also given to Qi Fabao, the regimental commander from the PLA Xinjiang Military Command, who was seriously injured in the clash, according to the report.

PLA Daily did not reveal the soldiers’ ranks.

According to the PLA Daily report, “foreign military” troops violated an agreement with China and crossed the border into the Chinese side to set up tents. The report also claimed that when Qi led a few PLA soldiers to negotiate, the Indian side deployed more soldiers in an attempt to force the Chinese troops to concede.

China and India have blamed each other for the skirmish.

A source in the Indian military previously told CNN that the dispute started over a Chinese tent that was constructed the night before the clash. Indian troops, according to the source, tore it down. The next day, Chinese soldiers armed with stones and bamboo sticks with nails returned, the source said and attacked unprepared Indian troops. CNN is unable to independently confirm this account of events.

In comments posted to an official Chinese Defense Ministry social media account Friday, spokesperson Ren Guoqiang accused India of “distorting the truth, misleading international public opinion and slandering the Chinese officers and soldiers in the frontier forces.” He said that China “kept a high degree of restraint to maintain ties between the two countries and militaries and worked to cool down the situation.”

Chinese state media published a report on the incident to “clarify the truth,” Ren added.

India and China share a 2,100 mile-long (3,379-kilometer) border in the Himalayas,which in places is poorly defined and hotly disputed. Both sides claim territory on either side of it.

The June 2020 clash erupted near Pangong Tso, a strategically important lake located some 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) above sea level, which spans an area stretching from the Indian territory of Ladakh to Chinese-controlled Tibet, in the greater Kashmir region where India, China and Pakistan all claim territory.

In 1962, India and China went to war over this remote, inhospitable stretch of land, eventually establishing the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border straddled by Pangong Tso. However, the two countries do not agree on the LAC’s precise location and both regularly accuse the other of overstepping it or seeking to expand their territory. Since then, they have had a history of mostly non-lethal scuffles over the position of the border.

In September, the two countries agreed to stop sending more troops to the border, following an escalation in tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The situation was temporarily resolved, with the two sides engaging in several rounds of talks.

But another “minor” face-off erupted between the two sides in January, according to the Indian Army, though it said that “was resolved by local commanders as per established protocols.”

On February 10, China’s Defense Ministry said the two countries had started to disengage along the south and north shores of Pangong Tso after reaching an agreement with India.

According to satellite images, China has withdrawn troops, dismantled infrastructure and vacated camps along the disputed border.

Satellite photos taken on January 30 by US-based Maxar Technologies showed some Chinese deployments along with Pangong Tso. In new images taken on Tuesday, dozens of vehicles and building structures had been removed, leaving empty land.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday that 11 000 Ebola vaccines would be sent to Guinea to tackle a resurgence of the deadly virus, which has been classified as a regional epidemic.

According to local and international media reports, 11 000 jabs are expected to land from Geneva, while a further 8 600 will be shipped from the United States.

The West African country declared an Ebola outbreak in one of its regions on February 14 when seven people fell ill with diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding after attending a burial in Goueke, near the Liberian border, writes news broadcaster Al Jazeera.

So far, five people have died of the disease.

As the world’s attention remains on the coronavirus pandemic vaccine roll-out, health experts are moving quickly to assist West Africa to contain the Ebola outbreak, a disease that killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016.

The global health body has alerted six African countries to watch out for potential cases of Ebola after it emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea early in February.

In a statement issued on Tuesday by the White House, the Biden administration said it will work with the affected governments, the WHO, the African Union, the African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and neighbouring states to stop these outbreaks.

US President Joe Biden said these types of outbreak required a swift and overwhelming response in order to avoid a catastrophe.

The 2013–2016 spread of Ebola sped up the development of a vaccine.

A global emergency stockpile of the Ebola vaccine funded by Gavi – the Vaccine Alliance has been created that will make 500 000 doses available to all countries for outbreak response.

The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved AstraZeneca for the emergency treatment of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The country, through a regulator, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control(NAFDAC), on Thursday said it has approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use authorisation.
This was made known to journalists by Professor Christiana Adeyeye, the NAFDAC Director-General.
The vaccine was recently approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for emergency use.
In a press briefing, NAFDAC says it got the dossier of the vaccine a week ago, and that its safety committee went to work immediately to evaluate its safety and efficacy for Nigerians.
The director-general said after a thorough evaluation of the vaccine, the regulatory body, in unison with the Federal Ministry of Health, approved it for emergency use.
The Pandemic has taken its toll in Nigerian just like other African countries. 
However, South Africa are the worst hit in the continent with the country even discovering a variant of the virus in the country, which has now reportedly spread to other countries.

Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, has ordered military crackdown in order to ensure safe release of hundreds of Schoolboys kidnapped by suspected bandits from their school in Niger State, North Central part of the country, in the early hours of Wednesday.

Also, the Niger State Government has reportedly ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state following the abduction of the schoolboys. 

The gunmen believed to belong to a criminal gang stormed a school in central Nigeria, killing one student and kidnapping hundreds of others along with some teachers, sources said Wednesday.

Heavily-armed gangs known locally as “bandits” in the northwest and central Nigeria have stepped up attacks in recent years, kidnapping for ransom, raping and pillaging.

In this case, large numbers of gunmen dressed in military uniforms, in the early hours of Wednesday, stormed the Government Science College (GSC) in the town of Kagara in Niger State before hauling students into a nearby forest, a government official and a security source said.

“Bandits went into GSC Kagara last night and kidnapped hundreds of students and their teachers,” said the official, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

“One of the kidnapped staff and some students managed to escape. The staff confirmed a student was shot dead during the kidnap operation,” the official said.

Like earlier said, the Niger State Government have ordered the closure of all boarding schools in the state following the abduction of the schoolboys.

Auckland has been placed on lockdown after New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed on Monday that three new cases of Covid-19 were detected in the city, Al Jazeera reported.

According to local broadcaster RNZ National, Ardern announced the new lockdown measures on Sunday as health officials investigated the new outbreak, saying they were right to take such precautions.

“However, we also know that based on that sequencing, we haven’t been able to link it to any other cases that we’ve had come through our managed isolation facilities and that tells us it’s unlikely, therefore, to have been some form of issue with our managed isolation,” Ardern told the radio station.

The Independent UK quoted Ardern as saying that health officials were trying to figure out the source of infection and were working on two main leads.

According to The Guardian UK, the prime minister said genomic testing had shown that the three community cases were the UK variant of Covid-19. Those cases were from a mother, father and daughter in Auckland.

The three-day lockdown includes closing public venues and banning all gatherings outside homes except for weddings and funerals, where as many as 10 people are allowed.

New Zealanders are being asked to download a Covid Tracer app and scan QR codes to record movement and who they pass by, wrote The Guardian.

However, schools will remain open for children of essential workers, but others were asked to stay at home, Al Jazeera said in its report.

According to Medical Express, the rest of the country has been placed on level two, which requires people to wear masks in public transport and gatherings are limited to a maximum of 100 people.

The medical publication said Ardern has been widely praised for her management of the pandemic, with the country recording 2,336 infections and 25 deaths.

Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was appointed on Monday as the first female and first African head of the World Trade Organization, at a special general meeting.

“WTO members have just agreed to appoint Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the next director-general,” the global trade body said in a statement, adding that the former Nigerian finance minister and World Bank veteran will take up her post on March 1.

The WTO picks its leaders through consensus-finding, so even though she was the only candidate still in the race – boasting US, EU and African backing – there was always the chance of a spanner being thrown in the works.

She will take over an organisation mired in multiple crises and struggling to help member states navigate the severe global economic slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Okonjo-Iweala argued during the race that she was best placed out of the eight candidates for the post to steer the WTO through the crises.

She has among other things warned that growing protectionism and nationalism have been spurred on by the pandemic and insists barriers need to be lowered to help the world recover.

South Africa’s embattled former president Jacob Zuma failed to appear on Monday before a judicial panel probing corruption during his nine-year tenure, again defying a court order for him to testify.

Zuma, 79, who has snubbed previous summonses by the commission, refused to comply with the order from the constitutional court which ruled last month that he has to appear before the panel this week.

The court in January ruled that Zuma had no right to remain silent during the proceedings.

He accuses the commission of bias and has demanded that its chair, Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, recuse himself from the anti-graft inquiry.In a letter penned by Zuma’s legal representatives, Mabuza attorneys, his lawyers said their client “would not be appearing before the commission on 15-19 February”.

Adding that appearing before deputy chief Justice Zondo would “undermine and invalidate the review application over his decision not to recuse himself”.

Zuma’s resistance comes a day after the ruling African National Congress reiterated the need for all its members to cooperate with the commission.

“To allow anything else would lead to anarchy and open the floodgates easily for counter-revolution,” the ANC said in a statement on Sunday.

Zuma, who came to power in 2009, was forced to resign in 2018 over graft scandals involving an Indian business family, the Guptas, who won lucrative contracts with state companies and were allegedly even able to choose cabinet ministers.

He set up the commission shortly before his ouster and only testified before it once in July 2019, but staged a walkout days later.

Fifty-two couples in Thailand got married while riding elephants on Sunday, in an annual Valentine’s Day mass wedding ceremony at a botanical garden in a province east of Bangkok.

Dancers and a band led the procession of elephants and couples and a local official, also on an elephant, oversaw the signing of the marriage licence.

“For me, I’ve been planning for a long time that if I were to sign a marriage licence one day, it must be an extraordinary event,” said groom Patiphat Panthanon, 26, sitting beside his 23-year-old bride.

The elephant-back wedding is an annual event at the Nong Nooch Tropical Garden in Chonburi province which usually attracts up to a hundred couples. But this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the numbers were down.

Kampon Tansacha, managing director of the Nong Nooch Tropical Garden, said that due to strict screening protocols for visitors, people were feeling safer and have started to come back to visit the botanical park, which showcases recreations of landscaped gardens from around the world.

Thailand’s tourism-reliant country has yet to lift a travel ban imposed last April to curb the outbreak, keeping most foreign investors away.