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President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will detail his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction in a memoir scheduled for release in April, publisher Gallery Books announced on Thursday.

Hunter Biden, a frequent target of conservative ire in the United States, also writes about the death of his brother Beau in “Beautiful Things,” due out on April 6.

The memoir recalls “Hunter’s descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety,” Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement.

Biden, who turned 51 on Thursday, was discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2014 after a positive test for cocaine.

In July 2019, he recalled to The New Yorker magazine how three years earlier someone put a gun to his head in Los Angeles after he asked a homeless man where he could buy crack.

President Biden has been unwavering in his support for Hunter and he and his wife, Jill, praised Hunter’s decision to publish the autobiography.

“We admire our son Hunter’s strength and courage to talk openly about his addiction so that others might see themselves in his journey and find hope,” they said in a statement read out by White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

Hunter became a regular focus of Donald Trump’s attacks ahead of the November 3 vote for his business dealings in Ukraine and China.

Hunter, now an artist based in Los Angeles, has admitted to displaying “poor judgment” in some of his business dealings, but denied any wrongdoing.

During the final presidential debate, when Trump mocked Hunter’s cocaine use, the former vice president simply said: “I’m proud of him. I’m proud of my son.”

Hunter and Beau survived a car crash that killed their mother and sister in December 1972, just weeks after their father was first elected a US senator from Delaware.

Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, less than two years after he was diagnosed.

“This is an astonishingly candid and brave book about loss, human frailty, wayward souls and hard-fought redemption,” author Dave Eggers wrote in a blurb for “Beautiful Things.”

At least 32 people have been confirmed dead and five others seriously injured after a grisly accident involving five vehicles along Fort Portal-Kasese highway in the western Ugandan district of Kasese on Tuesday night, reports Daily Monitor.

The 9pm accident occurred at Kihogo along Hima–Rugendabara road, according to eyewitness accounts. It occurred when a truck carrying a coffin and passengers going for a burial collided with a car along the section of the highway that is still under re-construction.

Tragically, drivers of other cars, unaware that there was an accident ahead, also lost control and rammed into the stationery accident vehicle.

Ms Irene Nakasita, the Uganda Red Cross Society Public Relations Officer, said 32 bodies were recovered and five survivors referred to Kilembe Hospital in Kasese District in western Uganda. 

“Our emergency response team working with Uganda Police and UPDF led by Major Charles Nzei has managed the incident,” she added in a message released to journalists on Wednesday morning.

“There was a big truck with a coffin and people on top, while a lorry full of people followed closely behind. When the car with a coffin hit another car, the lorry behind it also rammed into it causing another accident,” said Mr Alex Aliganyira, an eye witness.

He added, in a short interval, two other vehicles came and also rammed into the wreckage of the first accident.

Rwenzori East regional traffic commander, Mr Mathius Okwir said detectives were investigating the actual cause of the accident and would provide details later.

Bodies of the victims and the injured have been taken to Kilembe Mines Hospital.

Mr Martin Katende, a driver who was travelling from Mpondwe to Tororo, blamed the contractor of Fort Portal–Kasese road that is under construction for not putting warning signs on the road especially where heaps of sand and other road materials have been dumped on the roadside.

One of the survivors, Moris Kikwamimbi, told this Daily Monitor that they were travelling from Bundibugyo District in a canter registration number UAU 457F that had about 25 passengers on board heading to Maliba Kemihoko. As they approached UNRA weighbridge at Kihogo cell, they collided with a speeding Premio registration number UAU 700 U.

“The canter driver and another mzee died on the spot while the other passengers jumped out of the canter and tried to run. However, a lorry owned by Umeme, registration number UBF 968Y, arrived and as they (Umeme people) were still inquiring whether there were people who needed immediate help, two speeding trucks for Hima cement factory registration number UAY 793E and UAY 836Y rammed into other vehicles and some residents who had gathered at the scene,” he said

Daily Monitor confirmed seeing several bodies being loaded onto police vehicles and transferred to Kasese Municipal Health Centre III mortuary. A police officer attached to the Forensic Department at Hima Police Division told journalists that the number of the deceased persons could rise as some of the injured victims were in critical condition.

It was tragedy near Australian fourth biggest city, Perth, as a raging wildfire has reportedly destroyed at least 71 homes, said authorities on Wednesday, who urged the citizens to leave the threatened area despite the coronavirus lockdown.

The blaze has torn through swathes of land in the Perth Hills and was moving towards more densely populated areas.

Six firefighters received minor injuries — including one who officials said suffered burns and continued working to extinguish the blaze — but no deaths or serious injuries have been reported so far.

“To the people who have lost their homes, it’s just devastating for them. Our thoughts go out to them,” Western Australian fire commissioner Darren Klemm said.

Several emergency warnings were issued, with conditions set to worsen later Wednesday and strong gusting winds expected to fan the flames.

The blaze hit a population that had just been forced into a snap lockdown after a coronavirus case was detected. About two million people in and around Perth fell under the stay-at-home orders imposed on Sunday.

“This is a situation the likes of which we have never seen before,” said Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan.

“A full lockdown and raging bushfires. It is frighting and it will test us all.”

No new virus cases have been detected since the lockdown began, but the number of homes lost is still expected to rise slightly.

As the fire front edged nearer to more populated areas, Klemm called on locals to act swiftly to escape the potentially deadly blaze despite the coronavirus restrictions.

What we don’t want is indecision from people about whether they should evacuate or not when we require them to evacuate,” he said.

“So that evacuation overrides any quarantining requirements that people may have.”

Hundreds of people have fled the area since the bushfire was sparked on Monday, with many sleeping in evacuation centres overnight.

Among them was Peter Lavis, 68, who left two nights ago after watching distant smoke quickly transform the landscape until it “looked like a bomb had gone off”.

“We could see the fire clearly, the red glow and occasional rush of flames going up,” he told AFP.

“We had a little family conference and decided the best thing to do was to leave.”

Lavis said he believed his home was safe while a neighbour had reported his eldest daughter’s nearby house was also standing despite everything around it being burned.

“It’s some of the best news but also the saddest — a lot of people haven’t been so lucky,” he said.

Bushfire smoke has blanketed Perth, about 30 kilometres west of the blaze which had a 75-kilometre (47-mile) perimeter Tuesday and has so far burned almost 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres).

“It was just scorched earth. Even where I was behind the fire, there was a lot of active burning because the crews just had to react so fast,” local mayor Kevin Bailey told public broadcaster ABC.

Temperatures were forecast to peak at 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday before a predicted ex-tropical cyclone could bring rain and cooler temperatures but more unpredictable winds later this week.

Milder conditions overnight Tuesday had allowed firefighters to build containment lines in some areas, but Klemm cautioned there were “challenging times ahead”.

More than 200 firefighters are battling the bushfire supported by water-bombing aircraft.

More than 3.5 million hectares were burned across Western Australia during the country’s devastating 2019-2020 climate change-fuelled bushfires but the state was largely spared the loss of properties and lives seen in Australia’s more densely populated southeast.

Scientists said the layout of the Perth Hills left it particularly vulnerable to blazes made increasingly more dangerous by climate change, with large fires engulfing homes in the area four times since 2009.

“Urban-bushland living will increasingly mean living with bushfire threat as climate change brings with it more frequent high bushfire danger conditions days,” said Jim McLennan, a bushfire researcher at La Trobe University.

January 2021 has been a very fatal month for Zimbabwe in the Coronavirus pandemic as almost seventy percent of the deaths in the country because of the pandemic happened in the month.

This was revealed by the country’s Ministry of Health and Child Care.

In a statement released on Monday, the ministry said in January alone, a total of 854 people died from the coronavirus, representing nearly 70 per cent of all 1 217 fatalities recorded in the country since the onset of the virus in March last year, Xinhua news agency reported.

Several high profile Zimbabweans have succumbed to Covid-19, including four cabinet ministers.

A total of 33 388 infections have been reported since March 2020, with 19 521 being recorded in January, data from the ministry shows.

However, new confirmed infections have been declining for the past week.

The national recovery rate currently stands at 78 per cent, with 26,004 people having recovered from the virus.

Zimbabwe is in the middle of a six-week lockdown imposed to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.

The government is in the process of mobilizing the necessary resources to buy Covid-19 vaccines.

A total of US $100 million has been set aside so far for the procurement of Covid-19 vaccine doses, enough to inoculate at least 60 per cent of the country’s population.

The International Monetary Fund last week sent $350 million in cash to the Myanmar government, part of a no-strings-attached emergency aid package to help the country battle the coronavirus pandemic.

Days later, military leaders seized power and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected officials, in what the US State Department said on Tuesday constituted a coup.

There appears to be little the IMF can do to claw back the funds, part of rapid-disbursing Covid-19 financing programs with almost no conditions and approved by the IMF board on January 13, sources familiar with the payments and international finance experts said.

“We are following the unfolding developments closely. We are deeply concerned about the impact of events on the economy and on the people of Myanmar,” an IMF spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Reuters on Tuesday, confirming the payment was completed last week.

US President Joe Biden, facing his first international crisis since taking office less than two weeks ago, has threatened new sanctions against the generals, and the State Department said it would review its foreign assistance to the southeast Asian country.

The United States is the dominant shareholder in the IMF, which has provided Myanmar with $700 million in emergency coronavirus financing over the past seven months, including last week’s payment, which included $116.6 million through the IMF’s Rapid Credit Facility and $233.4 million through the Rapid Financing Instrument.

A cacophony from beaten cooking pans rang around Myanmar’s biggest city Yangon on Tuesday, in one of the largest signs of public disquiet at a military coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.

The Fund said in a statement on January 13 the money would help Myanmar meet “urgent balance-of-payments needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, especially the government’s recovery measures to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability while supporting affected sectors and vulnerable groups.”

Unlike the IMF’s regular financing programs, which disburse funds in smaller increments as performance benchmarks are met for agreed policy reforms, coronavirus emergency aid has been sent quickly, often all at once.

“It’s not a program that was negotiated, there isn’t conditionality and there aren’t forward-looking reviews with disbursements tied to those reviews,” said Stephanie Segal, a former IMF economist and US. Treasury official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“I’m not aware of any precedent where the money that’s been approved by the IMF board can be recalled,” Segal added.

The United Nations Special Envoy on Myanmar said on Tuesday (February 2) the country’s army generals should be ‘held accountable’ for carrying out a military coup and that they are heading towards ‘rough seas’.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis last year, the IMF has provided emergency financing to 80 countries.

The timing of the latest disbursement to Myanmar was unfortunate, two sources familiar with the payments said, and pointed to the risks of using rapid financing that gives governments broad discretion over how they spend the money.

The best-case scenario is that the Myanmar government that emerges from the current political turmoil will spend the money appropriately because it wants to have a productive relationship with the Fund, one of the sources said.

The IMF’s counterparty in Myanmar is the Central Bank of Myanmar, and the source expressed hope it can maintain its independence from the country’s finance ministry.

But on Tuesday, the ruling Myanmar military-appointed Than Nyein as the country’s new central bank governor, reinstating him to a post he previously held between 2007-2013, during the rule of the last junta.

Myanmar’s coup leader Min Aung Hlaing told the first meeting of his new government on Tuesday that it was inevitable the army would have to take power after its protests over alleged election fraud last year – which the electoral commission had dismissed, the army information service said.

The World Bank, which has provided more than $150 million in financing to Myanmar since the pandemic started a year ago, said on Monday it was gravely concerned about the military takeover, warning it risked a major setback to the country’s transition and its development prospects.

It has been reported that officials of the police in Angola have killed several protesting Separatists in the Country’s northeast over the weekend.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by the authorities and rights defenders, raising fresh concerns over a long-standing culture of police brutality.

The crackdown took place against an unauthorised demonstration in the diamond mining town of Cafunfo in the remote Luanda Norte province, around 750 kilometres east of the capital Luanda and near Angola’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Members of the Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate Movement, one of two active secessionist groups in the vast southwest African country, took to the streets on Saturday without the go-ahead from local authorities.

Accounts by authorities and rights defenders said the deadly incident that followed do not match.

Luanda Norte police claim officers acted in self-defence after around 300 armed protesters assaulted the Cafunfo police station under cover of dark, wounding two officers. 

“In response to such an evident rebellion and in an attempt to disperse them… the death of four citizens (ensued),” they said in a statement issued by the government on Saturday, adding that two wounded protesters died later in hospital.

But unverified video footage of the incident circulated on Twitter shows military and police officers standing over a dozen unarmed bodies in broad daylight.

Some lie motionless, covered in blood, while others are visibly injured and appear unable to stand. One official is seen kicking a man sitting on the ground and stamping on his head. 

Senior Human Rights Watch researcher Zenaida Machado, who shared the video, said it was sent to her directly by a police officer at the scene.

“Protesters were met by excessive use of force from the police,” Machado told AFP on Monday.

“The group claims that 12 of their activists were killed,” she added, saying that HRW was “in the process of verifying the footage”.

Angola’s main opposition UNITA party has meanwhile condemned the “barbaric murder of at least 21 citizens” by security forces and called on the government to “take a position”.

Police are notoriously violent in Angola — the legacy of a 1975-2002 civil war and almost four decades of repressed dissent under former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Machado said attitudes towards demonstrations had remained the same undercurrent President Joao Lourenco, who took office in 2017.

Police violently dispersed several protests against poor living conditions in the capital Luanda last year, firing live bullets and tear gas into the crowds.

“One of the main issues we have frequently raised is the need to reform the security and defence forces,” Machado said. “They cannot continue to operate as if they were in a state of war.”

Separatist movements are banned by Angolan law.

Even in the midst of the second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic, fake syndicates specialising in marketing fake vaccines have emerged in China as the country’s police have arrested more than 80 people and confiscated over 3,000 fake doses of fake Covid-19 vaccine as part of a campaign to combat vaccine-related crimes, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The suspects had been carrying out the ruse since at least September last year, Xinhua said on Monday, adding that all fake doses had been tracked down.

The fake vaccines were made by injecting saline into syringes, it said. The suspects may have intended to send the vaccines abroad, the government-backed Global Times newspaper reported, citing a source close to a major Chinese vaccine producer.

The police operation was carried out by police in multiple places including Beijing, Shanghai and the eastern province of Shandong, Xinhua said.

Countries from around the world have been rolling out vaccine programmes in the hope of bringing the year-long coronavirus pandemic to an end.

Zanzibar’s First Vice President Seif Sharif Hamad has confirmed reports that he has been hospitalised saying he tested positive for coronavirus, reports The Citizens.

Mr Hamad is the chairman of the main opposition Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) in the Tanzanian archipelago, which joined the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi to form a government of national unity after the October elections last year.

“It is true I am at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital where I am being treated for Covid-19 and my wife has been isolated at home,” said Mr Hamad in a text message on Monday.

He becomes the first person to publicly reveal a Covid-19 status since April last year when President John Magufuli declared the country coronavirus-free.

There is no official Covid-19-related statistics or information available in Tanzania and issuing of unsanctioned Covid-19 information is strictly prohibited and restricted to the president, prime minister, the minister for Health and the government’s chief spokesman.

However, despite his admission authorities in Zanzibar including the acting Health minister Said Mohammed Simai said he was not aware of the vice president’s hospitalisation.

The Citizen could not reach the Health Minister Dr Dorothy Gwajima and government spokesperson, Dr Hassan Abbasi, for comment by press time.

Earlier on Monday, a statement issued by the ACT-Wazalendo secretary-general Ado Shaibu said the veteran politician and his aides were admitted at the Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Unguja island since Friday.

“He remains under close medical supervision. We would like to take this opportunity to inform the public that Maalim Seif and his wife are progressing well. His family has been in communication with him,” the statement read.

“We also reiterate our call for all Tanzanians to take steps to protect themselves against this disease.”

Last week, President Magufuli called for caution against Covid-19 vaccines being developed by Western scientists. The president also said that Tanzania is not planning to impose Covid-19 restrictions or lockdown anytime.

The effects of the second wave of Coronavirus pandemic is hitting hard on Nigeria as the country recorded a whopping 405 deaths from the pandemic in two months.

This was disclosed by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 on Tuesday, saying the highest fatality recorded in a day occurred on February 1, 2021, where 21 deaths occurred.

The task force also said that 75 health workers were infected last week, just as the country lost as many as 45 doctors since the first index case in February 2020.

The chairman of PTF and Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Boss Mustapha, said the fatality rate is 34 percent higher. He revealed that that Covid-19-related deaths increased from 1,173 as at last November 29, 2020, to 1,578 on January 31, 2021.

During a sensitisation meeting on the introduction of Covid-19 vaccine with leaders of the Christian Association Of Nigeria (CAN) and scholars in Abuja, Mustafa said: “Nigeria, like the rest of the world, is now experiencing a more virulent second wave, which has increased the number of Covid-19 related deaths.’’

He added that thought the number of infections has grown tremendously, the arrival of vaccines has given hope to humanity.

“I wish to make it abundantly clear that nobody is safe around the world until everyone is vaccinated,” Mustapha said.

The Director-General of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, also reported that there has been increasing transmission of the virus.

“We are working very hard to get access to the vaccines because if we don’t, the virus keeps circulating, mutating and potentially getting better adapted to the environment and its ability to transmit.

“We are gradually experiencing an increase in the number of deaths. These are tragic circumstances. Everything we are doing in the response is really about preventing severe cases and death. This is what we are most worried about,” Dr Ihekweazu said.

He said that 57 million doses of vaccines from various makers are expected in the country in batches, beginning from February with the hope of vaccinating 50 million Nigerians this year.

Nigeria has a population of over 200 million people.

The government is taking tougher measures to stop the spread of the pandemic, including the plan to suspend flights from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and The Netherlands as well as enforcing the compulsory wearing of face masks.

In Abuja, the country’s capital city, mobile courts have swung into action, shutting facilities that have violated prevention measures.

The court on February 1, 2021, shut down the popular Wuse Market, UTC and the Murg shopping plazas in the metropolis and convicted about 100 people who were arrested by the enforcement team for not wearing face masks in public places.

The court presided over by Magistrate Idayat Akanni, fined the violators N2,000 ($5.25) each, with an option of two weeks community service.

The World Bank said Tuesday it was suspending the first tranche of USD100 million in a programme to fund free schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo over “fraud and corruption” in the country’s education sector.

Directors at the development lender had signed off last year on USD800 million of funding for free primary schooling, a flagship project of President Felix Tshisekedi.

But in a report published in November, the DRC’s Inspector General of Finances “revealed a number of shortcomings and alleged cases of fraud and corruption in connection with the use of public funds in the sector, as well as weaknesses in internal controls,” the World Bank said in a statement.

“The disbursement scheduled for December is currently on hold, while the World Bank similarly exercises its own fiduciary responsibility,” the institution added, saying it was “working closely with the Congolese authorities”.

In its report, the IGF said it found fake invoices, lists of teachers stuffed with fake names at non-existent schools, as well as the suspected embezzlement of 63 billion Congolese francs ($31 million).

Trade union sources told AFP that two senior civil servants in the education system singled out by the report, including the head of teachers’ payroll, were in pre-trial detention.

“These two added large numbers of non-teachers to the payroll system on a regular basis,” said Jean-Bosco Puna of the National Catholic Teachers’ Union.

Tshisekedi’s education push saw four million new pupils sign up during the 2019-20 academic year, although the coronavirus pandemic forced a pause in teaching for six months.

Schools and universities had to close for a second time in December after reopening two months before.

The free schools’ programme was estimated to cost USD2.6 billion when it was launched, more than one-third of the DRC’s annual budget for 2021 — even as other public goods like hospitals and roads are lacking.

Most of the DRC’s 87 million people are under the age of 20.