International

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died Sunday at the age of 90, was the moral compass of his beloved "Rainbow Nation", never afraid to speak truth to power, whatever its creed or colour. A tireless activist, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for combatting white minority rule in his country. "The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa," President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. Famously outspoken, even after the fall of the racist apartheid regime, Tutu never shied away from confronting South Africa's shortcomings or injustices. ______________________________________ Read also: Nobel Prize-winning anti-apartheid hero Desmond Tutu dies aged 90 ______________________________________     "It's a great privilege, it's a great honour that people think that maybe your name can make a small difference," he told AFP shortly before his 80th birthday in 2011. Whether taking on his church over gay rights, lobbying for Palestinian statehood or calling out South Africa's ruling African National Congress on corruption, his high-profile campaigns were thorny and often unwelcome. None at the top were spared -- not even his close friend, late president Nelson Mandela, with whom Tutu sparred in 1994 over what he called the ANC's "gravy train mentality". Yet "the Arch" brought an exuberant playfulness to all his endeavours. Quick to crack jokes -- often at his own expense -- he was always ready to dance and laugh uproariously with an infectious cackle that became his trademark. It was Tutu who coined and popularised the term "Rainbow Nation" to describe South Africa when Mandela became president. At the time, Tutu was serving as the first black Anglican archbishop of Cape Town. Ordained at the age of 30 and appointed archbishop in 1986, he used his position to advocate for international sanctions against apartheid, and later to lobby for rights globally.   - 'Moral titan' -    Along the way, he won a host of admirers. "I believe that God is waiting for the archbishop. He is waiting to welcome Desmond Tutu with open arms," said Mandela, who stayed at Tutu's home on his first night of freedom in 1990, after 27 years in apartheid jails. "If Desmond gets to heaven and is denied entry, then none of the rest of us will get in!" The Dalai Lama called Tutu his "spiritual older brother". Irish activist and pop star Bob Geldof praised him as "a complete pain in the arse" for those in power, and US President Barack Obama hailed him as "a moral titan". Among Tutu's critics were Zimbabwe's veteran former president Robert Mugabe, who described him as an "evil and embittered little bishop". Even with his global celebrity, his faith remained an integral part of his life. His family's road trips included quiet time for prayers, and his missives blasting the evils of apartheid were signed off with "God bless you". "I developed tremendous respect for his fearlessness. It wasn't fearlessness of a wild kind. It was fearlessness anchored in his deep faith in God," said apartheid's last leader, F.W. de Klerk. Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and underwent repeated treatment. He had retired a year earlier to lead a harrowing journey into South Africa's brutal past, as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. For 30 months, the commission lifted the lid on the horrors of apartheid. Tutu, with his instinctive humanity, broke down and sobbed at one of its first hearings. A recipient of numerous awards, his causes ranged from child marriage to Tibet to calls for Western leaders to be tried over the Iraq war, and in later year for the right-to-die.  He also swore he would never worship a homophobic God. "I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place," he said.   - Post-apartheid frustrations -    Born in the small town of Klerksdorp, west of Johannesburg, on October 7, 1931, Tutu was the son of a domestic worker and a school teacher. Following in his father's footsteps, he trained as a teacher before anger at the inferior education system set up for black children prompted him to become a priest. He lived for a while in Britain, where, he recalled, he would needlessly ask for directions just to be called "Sir" by a white policeman. Tutu believed firmly in the reconciliation of black and white South Africans. "I am walking on clouds. It is an incredible feeling, like falling in love. We South Africans are going to be the Rainbow People of the world," he said in 1994. But post-apartheid South Africa increasingly became a source of his despair, as the high hopes of the early days of democracy gave way to disillusionment over violence, inequality and graft. Never a member of the ANC, Tutu said in 2013 that he would no longer vote for the party, though President Cyril Ramaphosa -- an old friend -- re-built bridges after coming to power in 2018. Tutu made a rare public appearance in May 2021 to receive his vaccine for Covid-19. He appeared outside of hospital in a wheelchair, and waved but did not speak. He married his wife Leah in 1955. They had four children.

After five years’ work and at a cost of more than a billion dollars, Senegal’s capital city tomorrow will finally welcome a new commuter railway line. Politicians are lining up to extol the benefits of slashing journey times and decongesting Dakar once the gleaming TER regional express trains start to roll. But thousands of residents claim they have not been properly compensated for homes and businesses that were demolished to make way for the much-trumpeted line. “We plan to block the start of the TER on the day of the inauguration to demand satisfaction for our grievances,” said Ibrahima Cisse, who leads a group of some 16,000 people who say they are owed money. Many are also furious that the rehousing they were promised has not yet been completed. The government says that almost everyone who is owed compensation has received it, but accepts that some resettlements have not yet happened. Travelling at up 160km (100 miles) per hour, the trains will ply the 36km (22-mile) route between Dakar and the new city of Diamniadio in about 20 minutes. Supporters of the project say it will carry 115,000 people per day, saving them hours otherwise spent in the capital’s monstrous traffic jams. The time it took to build “may seem long, but we have broken records for the speed of construction, and despite Covid,” Stephane Volant of Seter, the railway’s operating company, told AFP. Critics say the true cost of the project is more than a thousand trillion CFA francs ($1.7bn), compared with its budget of 780bn francs. Seter will use 15 four-car dual-mode trains with diesel and electric power, built by Alstom, one of several French companies, including Seter, that have had a leading role in the project. Tickets for the Dakar-Diamniadio stretch will cost 1,500 CFA francs ($2.5) in second class, and 2,500 francs ($4.3) in first. The railway line, which is owned by the Senegalese state, is a centre piece of President Macky Sall’s plan to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure by 2035. Improving the situation in Dakar is one of Sall’s pet themes. The city’s 5mn inhabitants make up almost one-third of Senegal’s population and account for nearly all of the country’s economic activity. Traffic jams cost the city the equivalent of $172mn per year, according to official figures. The TER stations will hook up with express buses which will operate on reserved lanes on a toll highway that has been operating for the last decade. In the project’s second phase, the line will be extended another 19km to the Blaise Diagne International Airport, which opened in 2017. Travel time to downtown Dakar from the airport would take less than 50 minutes. Behind these impressive figures, those battling for compensation say their lives have been wrecked by the train line. “The TER has impoverished us. It’s a project that has created the living dead,” said Amina Bayo, a member of Cisse’s campaign group, called the Collective of People Affected by the TER. Some 2,000 individuals and businesses have filed complaints with Apix, the state-owned agency that has overseen the project, claiming 50bn CFA francs ($86mn). They say that in many cases, assessors badly under-valued their property. But Yatma Dieye of Apix told AFP that “98.8% of people affected by the project have been compensated.” “Payments began in February 2017. Everything was transparent and done according to international standards,” he said. But he conceded that the state was “still working” on resettlement, a point that can be seen clearly in one Dakar suburb intended to house the evicted. Unfinished market stalls with electric wires hanging down to the ground sit in a stretch of weeds near a disused lot close to a motorway. “The construction site was supposed to be completed in April 2018 for more than 2,000 evicted traders,” said one of them, Ngagne Amar. Many compensation claimants face an uphill battle, especially those lacking documentation. Dieye said much of the evidence received by Apix “was generally weak.”

Tens of thousands of Sudanese protesters rallied yesterday two months after a military coup, demanding that soldiers “go back to the barracks” and calling for a transition to civilian rule. Waving flags, beating drums, dancing and chanting, crowds marched on the streets of Khartoum despite severed communications and a heavy presence of security forces who later fired tear gas to disperse them. An AFP journalist saw injured people being evacuated by demonstrators. The Doctors’ Committee, part of the pro-democracy movement, reported that security forces fired tear gas into hospitals, attacking doctors as well as the wounded. Officers had earlier barricaded bridges connecting the capital to suburbs, cut phone lines and restricted Internet access ahead of the planned protests. At least 48 people have died in crackdowns during weeks of demonstrations, according to the Doctors’ Committee, and Khartoum’s state governor has warned that security forces “will deal with those who break the law and create chaos”. Demonstrators converged on the presidential palace in Khartoum, the headquarters of the military government in control since General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power on October 25. Burhan held civilian leader Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok effectively under house arrest for weeks. After international pressure including a cut-off of vital aid, Burhan reinstated him on November 21 under a deal promising elections for July 2023. The move alienated many of Hamdok’s pro-democracy supporters, who dismissed it as providing a cloak of legitimacy for Burhan’s coup. “What happened on October 25 was a coup...and we will not stop demonstrating until we have a civilian government,” a masked woman protester near the presidential palace said yesterday. Othman Mustafa, a 31-year-old male demonstrator, said: “We don’t just want the military out, we want to choose our own Sudan that looks like us, that responds to our demands and gives everyone equal rights”. As well as rallies in Khartoum and its suburbs, protesters also marched on the streets of Wad Madani, a city around 150 kilometres to the south, witnesses said. Others reported demonstrations at Atbara in the north and Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Security forces with cranes used shipping containers to block the bridges across the Nile River connecting Khartoum to the sister cities of Omdurman and North Khartoum, and web monitoring group NetBlocks reported mobile Internet services cut at sunrise yesterday. Activists reported the arrest of several colleagues from Friday night onwards, and Volker Perthes, the United Nations special envoy to Sudan, urged the authorities to “protect” the protests, not prevent them. “Freedom of expression is a human right,” Perthes said yesterday, adding that it includes “full access” to the Internet. “No one should be arrested for his or her intention to protest peacefully,” he said. The Doctors’ Committee called on the world “to monitor what happens in Sudan on the issue of the revolutionary movement for freedom and democracy”.Khartoum’s governor warned that “approaching or attacking buildings of strategic sovereignty is punishable by law”.At rallies on December 19 crowds began a “sit-in” protest outside the presidential palace. It recalled the action which ultimately led to the ouster of veteran strongman Omar al-Bashir three years earlier after mass demonstrations. But this time, within hours, security forces dispersed the thousands of protesters with truncheons and tear gas. Activists have condemned sexual attacks during the December 19 protests, in which the UN said at least 13 women and girls were raped.Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, has a long history of military coups, enjoying only rare interludes of democratic rule since independence in 1956. More than 14mn people, roughly a third of Sudan’s population, will need humanitarian aid next year — the highest level for a decade, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Activists say more demonstrations are planned for December 30.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States yesterday urged war-torn Libya to quickly set a new date for delayed presidential elections. “We call on the relevant Libyan authorities to respect the aspirations of the Libyan people for prompt elections by swiftly determining a final date for the polling and issuing the final list of presidential candidates without delay,” said a joint statement from five nations. The authorities overseeing Libya’s first presidential election said earlier this week holding it yesterday as scheduled would be “impossible”. The vote was intended to mark a fresh start for the oil-rich North African country, a year after a landmark ceasefire and more than a decade after its 2011 revolt that toppled and killed rule Muammar Gaddafi. But speculation of a delay had been mounting for weeks. There were bitter disputes over the vote’s legal basis, the powers of the winner and the candidacies of several deeply divisive figures. On Wednesday, the chairman of the parliamentary committee overseeing the vote wrote to the assembly’s speaker saying that “after consulting the technical, judicial and security reports, we inform you of the impossibility of holding the elections on the date of December 24, 2021”. It did not propose an alternative to yesterday, a date set last year during UN-led peace talks in Tunis. The country’s electoral commission, the HNEC, later Wednesday suggested delaying the vote to January 24. Libya’s parliament is to meet on Monday to debate a new timeline for elections. The election, intended to go hand-in-hand with parliamentary polls, was part of a United Nations-led peace process, yet UN special envoy Jan Kubis resigned just weeks before the ballot. One point of contention was a presidential elections law controversially passed by speaker Aguila Saleh, which critics say bypassed due process and favoured a run by his ally, eastern military chief Khalifa Haftar. Another candidate is Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam — a divisive symbol of the old regime wanted by the International Criminal Court over war crimes allegations. Libya has seen a year of relative calm since the October 2020 ceasefire following a year-long offensive by Haftar’s forces on Tripoli, with both sides backed by foreign states. But with vast stockpiles of weapons left behind by the Gaddafi regime, the potential for new fighting in Libya remains ever-present.

Nigeria said it had incinerated yesterday more than a million doses of Covid vaccine that had been donated by developed countries several months ago and had since passed their expiry dates. Africa’s most populous country has so far fully vaccinated 4mn people — less than 3% of the adult population and well short of the government’s target of 112mn people by the end of next year. “We have successfully withdrawn about 1,066,214 doses of expired AstraZeneca vaccines,” said Faisal Shuaib of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency. “When these vaccines were offered to us we knew that they had a short shelf-life, but we were living in an environment where the supply of Covid-19 vaccines was very scarce, they were not available due to vaccine nationalism,” he said. Rich countries, he said, hoarded jabs and then offered them for donation “at the point that they are about to expire.” The UN has long warned that inequalities in global vaccine distribution is leaving many vulnerable people in poorer nations without a single jab, even as richer countries roll out booster programmes. Nigerian officials said on Monday that the country was facing a fourth wave of the pandemic and called for strict compliance with the rules during the holiday season. The country’s health watchdog, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), says the number of Covid cases has risen by 500% over the past two weeks, driven by the Delta and Omicron variants. In a population of 220mn, the authorities have recorded around 225,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, with fewer than 3,000 related deaths.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched to the presidential palace in Sudan’s capital Khartoum yesterday in protest at the October 25 military coup, drawing volleys of tear gas and stun grenades from security forces, Reuters witnesses said. Some protesters managed to reach the gates of the palace and the protest’s organisers called on more to join a planned sit-in there after sundown. Reuters was not able to verify how many were able to reach the palace. Live video footage showed those who remained being tear gassed heavily. The outpouring of protest, the ninth major demonstration since the coup and one of the largest, marked the 2018 burning of a ruling party building which touched off a popular uprising that led to the overthrow of long-ruling Islamist autocrat Omar al-Bashir. Protests against the coup have continued even after the reinstatement of the prime minister last month, with demonstrators demanding no more military involvement at all in government in a transition towards free elections. Demonstrators marched down a main road leading to the palace, chanting “the people are stronger and retreat is impossible”, with some darting into side streets to dodge volleys of tear gas. There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests. Despite security forces blocking bridges over the Nile river into the capital early yesterday, protesters were able to cross a bridge connecting the city of Omdurman to central Khartoum but were met with heavy tear gas, Reuters witnesses said. Reuters witnesses also watched protesters crossing a bridge from Bahri, north of Khartoum, to the capital. Images shared on social media showed protests taking place in several other cities including Port Sudan, El-Deain, Madani and Kassala. Early yesterday joint army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces sealed off major roads leading to the airport and the army headquarters and they were heavily deployed around the presidential palace. Protesters also blocked roads leading to the main route of the march. Some were carrying Sudanese flags and photos of protesters who were killed in demonstrations in the past few months. Others were handing out coronavirus (Covid-19) masks and carrying stretchers in anticipation of people being wounded. The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors says 45 people have been killed in crackdowns on protesters since the October 25 coup. It was the ninth in a series of demonstrations against the coup, which have continued even after the military signed a deal on November 21 with Hamdok, who had been under house arrest, and released him and other high-profile political detainees. On Saturday night, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok warned in a statement that Sudan’s revolution faced a major setback and that political intransigence from all sides threatened the country’s unity and stability. The military and civilian political parties had shared power since Bashir’s removal. However, the agreement reinstating Hamdok angered protesters, who previously had seen him as a symbol of resistance to military rule and denounced his deal with the military as a betrayal. Civilian parties, and neighbourhood resistance committees that have organised several mass protests, demand full civilian rule under the slogan “no negotiation, no partnership, no legitimacy”. On Saturday night and early yesterday morning, people arrived in bus convoys from other states, including North Kordofan and Gezira, to join the protests in Khartoum, witnesses said.

Recycling in Morocco may be in its infancy, but the North African kingdom is making steady progress, helped by a Swiss firm that specialises in processing organic waste. “Nothing’s thrown away here: everything is transformed,” says Mohamed El Kabous proudly, crumbling a fistful of compost produced by Elephant Vert (EV – Green Elephant) in the central city of Meknes. Established in 2012 as EV’s largest such plant on the African continent, the factory has an annual turnover of 40,000 tonnes of compost and organic fertiliser. Mountains of sawdust, palettes and fruit tree branches cover a storage platform as trucks rumble past loaded with manure, and excavators aerate piles of compost. EV production manager Kabous said that no household organic waste is processed at the factory because “it’s too costly”. The pre-sorting of residential waste is “almost non-existent”, he told AFP. Instead, the waste comes from nearby farms and factories that work with wood, or co-operatives producing essential oils. “After the carbon-rich organic matter and nitrogen-rich manure from non-industrial livestock breeding is mixed, nature then takes over,” Kabous said. Wood is absorbent, so no stench emanates from the open-air fermentation area, where it takes about four months to produce the compost. The odour is actually of fresh earth. Kabous joked that it even smelt like zammita, a traditional Moroccan cake made with flour, almonds and sesame seeds. The EV plant also produces fertiliser by adding potash or phosphorus to the compost. EV’s output is sold mainly on the local market to organic farms and large enterprises whose soil has lost nutrients through the over-use of chemical fertilisers. Agriculture remains a pillar of the Moroccan economy. “There’s increasing demand from farmers keen to make sure their land is sustainable, and who know they need to opt for healthy and sustainable agriculture,” Kabous said. Meknes is also home to other organic recycling initiatives, including a waste treatment and recovery plant operated by French giant Suez. However, nationwide, it’s a different story. In 2015, official figures supplied to AFP showed that just 6% of household waste was recycled – 420,000 tonnes out of 7mn – while the remainder was buried. Instead, up to 12% of industrial waste was recycled – mainly plastic, paper, metal and electrical and electronic equipment. Morocco’s official recycling target is 20% of waste by 2022, a date that has now been pushed back to 2030. Mustapha Brakez, an expert in urban recycling, was scathing of government efforts to boost the practice. “These strategies the bureaucrats in (the capital) Rabat have come up with lead nowhere as they are based on models from Europe, which are opposite to Moroccan habits,” he said. Nearly 80% of household waste in Morocco is organic, he noted, while in Europe the figure is less than 30%. The kingdom has just 26 landfill and sorting centres, while official data shows that 66 illegal rubbish dumps have been regularised or closed. “Every effort is focused on treatment, without coming up with solutions for collection” of the waste, Brakez said. He called waste management in Morocco “a time bomb”. “We will just create even more landfills, without taking care of the problem at source,” he said. “It is essential to come up with a system that starts with sorting at the household level.”

The UN Human Rights Council has voted to set up an independent investigation into abuses in the Ethiopian conflict, after a senior UN official said there had been violations on all sides and mass arrests under a government crackdown. The resolution, brought by the European Union and backed by Western states, passed despite objections from Ethiopia, which dismissed accusations of abuses and said it had already cooperated in investigations into the year-old war. “A number of these violations may amount to crimes against humanity, and urgently require further investigations by independent experts,” the EU delegation to the UN in Geneva said in a statement welcoming the decision. The resolution establishes a three-member panel of experts for one year to collect evidence and identify those responsible for violations with a view to future prosecutions. Just before the vote, Ethiopia’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Zenebe Kebede, dismissed what he called a “politically-motivated” text. “The allegations levied against my country are unfounded and disregard the facts on the ground,” he added. Earlier, he denounced what he said was a series of abuses by rebellious forces from the northern Tigray region and said the government would not work with the proposed panel. “Ethiopia is being targeted and singled out at the Human Rights Council for defending a democratically elected government, the peace and the future of its people,” he said. Thousands of civilians have died and millions have fled in the conflict between the federal government and rebellious forces including fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for nearly 30 years. There was no immediate comment from the TPLF yesterday. Ethiopia’s conflict began when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 after accusing the region’s dissident ruling party of attacks on federal army camps. The Nobel Peace laureate declared victory over the TPLF but rebel fighters staged a shock comeback, recapturing most of Tigray and pushing into neighbouring Afar and Amhara. The vote on the motion after a day-long special session was 21 states in favour, 15 against including China and Russia, with 11 abstentions at the 47-member forum in Geneva. The African Group of countries had also called for the resolution to be rejected, saying that the proposed investigative mechanism was “counterproductive”. However, six African countries including Senegal and Sudan broke ranks and abstained, the tally showed.

Two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine appear to have given 70% protection against hospitalisation in South Africa in recent weeks, a major real-world study on the potential impact of Omicron showed on Tuesday, as the country battles a spike in infections linked to the new variant. The study released by South Africa's largest private health insurance administrator, Discovery Health, was based on more than 211,000 positive Covid-19 test results from Nov. 15 to Dec. 7, around 78,000 of which were attributed to Omicron. The 78,000 results are not confirmed Omicron cases, meaning the study is not able to draw conclusive findings about the variant labelled "of concern" by the World Health Organization. South African scientists have so far confirmed around 550 Omicron sequences, with the variant accounting for 78% of sequences from November, more than the previously dominant Delta variant. South Africa alerted the world to Omicron late last month, triggering alarm that it could cause another surge in global infections, and leading to the imposition of travel restrictions on southern Africa. South Africa's daily infections have since risen to around 20,000 in recent days. Based on analysis by Discovery's clinical research and actuarial teams, and in collaboration with South Africa's Medical Research Council (SAMRC), the real-world study calculated that two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech offered 70% protection against hospitalisation during the recent surge in cases and 33% protection against infection. South Africa is using the Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson vaccines in its Covid-19 immunisation campaign, with more than 20 million Pfizer doses administered so far. It concluded that there was a higher risk of reinfection during the fourth wave than during previous waves and that the risk of hospitalisation among adults diagnosed with Covid-19 was 29% lower than during the country's first wave early last year. Children appeared to have a 20% higher risk of hospital admission with complications during the fourth wave than during the first, despite a very low absolute incidence, it said. Discovery cautioned that the study's findings should be considered preliminary. Glenda Gray, SAMRC president, said it was important that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine appeared to be offering good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation.

The two starving cheetah cubs squeak and tug at their string leashes in the white dust of Somaliland as a government vet pushes needles through the fluffy fur to drip-feed them liquid and nutrients. Just around five months old, the baby cheetahs are dehydrated, stunted and so lacking in the calcium they would normally get from their mother's milk that they have problems walking. But at least they are alive. The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) and the government of Somaliland - which broke away from Somalia in 1991 - have been rescuing trafficked cheetah cubs in the region for the past four years. Only around 6,700 adult cheetahs are left in the wild worldwide, and the population is still declining, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Kidnapped cubs are often destined for the exotic pet trade in the Middle East but few people realise the suffering that entails. Four or five cheetah cubs die for each one that reaches the market, Dr. Laurie Marker, the head of CCF, said. Mothers are often killed. Their first year, CCF received around 40 cubs in Somaliland, she added. Many didn't survive long. But by setting up safehouses and providing veterinary care, they've been able to cut deaths to almost zero, she said. Right now the organisation houses 67 cheetahs. Droughts exacerbated by global warming are increasing pressure on the cheetahs, she said, as less grazing supports fewer herds of wild prey and farm animals. Farmers who once shrugged it off when a cheetah attacked one of their animals are now less able to shoulder losses, she said. "If a predator eats their livestock, they are much more angry," she said. "They will go and track the mother down, where the cubs would be, and try to get money from the cubs to support the losses that they had." Somaliland is planning to open a national park where the cheetahs will be able to roam, Environmental Minister Shukri Ismail Haji, said. But although the tiny breakaway region lies in the band most affected by climate change, it cannot access most environmental funding because hardly any world bodies recognise it as a separate country from Somalia, the minister said. "We are an unrecognized government. The international funding we can get is very little as a result."

The Omicron variant of the coronavirus can partially evade the protection from two doses of Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and partner BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine, the research head of a laboratory at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa said on Tuesday. Still, the study showed that blood from people who had received two doses of the vaccine and had a prior infection were mostly able to neutralise the variant, suggesting that booster doses of the vaccine could help to fend off infection. Alex Sigal, a professor at the Africa Health Research Institute, said on Twitter there was "a very large drop" in neutralisation of the Omicron variant relative to an earlier strain of Covid-19. The lab tested blood from 12 people who had been vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, according to a manuscript posted on the website for his lab. The preliminary data in the manuscript has not yet been peer reviewed. Blood from five out of six people who had been vaccinated as well as previously infected with Covid-19 still neutralised the Omicron variant, the manuscript said. "These results are better than I expected. The more antibodies you got, the more chance you'll be protected from Omicron," Sigal said on Twitter. He said the lab had not tested the variant against blood from people who had received a booster dose, because they are not available in South Africa yet. According to the manuscript, the lab observed a 41-fold decline in levels of neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant. Sigal said on Twitter that figure is likely to be adjusted after his lab does more experiments. While neutralizing antibodies are an indicator of the body's immune response, scientists believe other kinds of cells such as B-cells and T-cells also are stimulated by the vaccines and help protect against the effects of the coronavirus. The preliminary data does not indicate that the vaccine is less able to prevent severe illness or death. While lab tests are under way, BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin said last week "we think it's likely that people will have substantial protection against severe disease caused by Omicron." The Omicron variant, first detected in southern Africa last month, has triggered alarms globally of another surge in infections, with more than two dozen countries from Japan to the United States reporting cases. The World Health Organization classified it on Nov. 26 as a "variant of concern," but said there was no evidence to support the need for new vaccines specifically designed to tackle the Omicron variant with its many mutations. There is not significant data yet on how vaccines from Moderna (MRNA.O), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and other drugmakers hold up against the new variant. All the manufacturers, including Pfizer and BioNTech, are expected to release their own data within weeks. BioNTech's Sahin told NBC News on Tuesday that the drugmaker has data coming on Wednesday or Thursday related to the new variant. Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday that preliminary evidence indicates that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus likely has a higher degree of transmissibility but is less severe. He said the United States was doing its own tests to determine the protectiveness of the current vaccines against the variant and expects results sometime next week. Umer Raffat, an analyst for Evercore ISI, cautioned against reading too much into a single study, noting there has been significant variability in measuring declines in antibody levels in previous lab studies. "Let’s wait for additional studies to draw a mosaic," he said.    

Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok said yesterday he has replaced Sudan’s police chiefs after more than 40 people were killed in a crackdown on protests following last month’s military coup. Military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power and detained Hamdok on October 25, but after international condemnation and mass protests he reinstated the premier in a November 21 deal. Medics say at least 42 people were killed as security forces sought to crush weeks of anti-coup demonstrations, with protests continuing even after Hamdok’s release from house arrest and return to his post last week. Yesterday, Hamdok said he had sacked the director general of the police, Khaled Mahdi Ibrahim al-Emamf, and his deputy, Ali Ibrahim. In their place, he appointed Anan Hamed Mohamed Omar with Abdelrahman Nasreddine Abdallah as his deputy, the premier said in a statement. Medics have accused security forces of targeting protesters in the “head, neck and torso” with live ammunition, as well as with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas canisters. The police have denied reports they opened fire using live bullets. In addition, hundreds of political activists, journalists, protesters and bystanders watching the rallies have been arrested in recent weeks, and remain in custody. While several civilian leaders have been released since last Sunday’s deal, key figures are also still in detention. The deal raised hopes for some that Sudan will be able to return to its tenuous transition process. But critics slammed the agreement as “whitewashing” the coup, with some protesters accusing Hamdok of “treason” by signing it. Hamdok, who has headed a transitional government since the 2019 ouster of long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir, said Wednesday he partnered with the military in order to “stop the bloodshed” and “not squander the gains of the last two years”. The deal he signed with Burhan lays down a “clear date” for Sudan’s first free elections in three decades slated for July 2023, the premier said.

Algerians voted yesterday in local elections seen as key in President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s push to turn the page on the two-decade rule of late president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Tebboune called the election “the last step in building a modern state”, and promised an “economically-strong” nation, as he cast his ballot. The election is the third vote in Algeria under Tebboune, who has vowed to reform state institutions inherited from Bouteflika, who was driven from power by the Hirak pro-democracy protest movement in April 2019. But despite official campaigns urging Algerians to “make their mark”, the vote for municipal and provincial councils sparked little public interest. By 1:00pm (1200 GMT), turnout was running at 13%, the election authority ANIE said, with polls to set to close at 7:00pm. The North African country’s rulers are trying to “impose their will despite the embarrassing results of previous elections”, said analyst Mohamed Hennad. More than 23mn people are eligible to vote, with 115,230 candidates standing for municipal and provincial councils. Results are expected today. Campaigning had been muted, despite calls by authorities on Algerians to take part if they “want change” and “institution building”. Omar, an engineer, said he would not cast a ballot. “Nothing will change,” he said. Yacine, a teacher, said he was voting for rivals of the current Algiers mayor “even if I have no illusions” that they will be better. Tebboune was elected in a contentious, widely boycotted 2019 ballot months after Bouteflika stepped down under pressure from the army and Hirak rallies.He has vowed to break with past elections marred by widespread claims of fraud. Algeria’s local assemblies elect two-thirds of the national parliament’s upper house, with the president appointing the remainder. Redouane Boudjemaa, a journalism professor at the University of Algiers, said the vote was simply “an attempt to clean up the facade of local councils by changing their members, to benefit the ruling class”, he said. “Politics at the moment is limited to slogans proclaiming that the country has entered a new era, while all indicators point to the contrary,” Boudjemaa added.  Tebboune, who was a prime minister under Bouteflika, pushed through an amended constitution in November 2020, approved by less than 24% of the electorate, and oversaw a parliamentary election that saw just 23% of voters take part. His rule has seen a crackdown on journalists and Hirak activists, even as he has packaged major policy moves in response to calls by the protest movement for reform. He has also faced one diplomatic crisis with Algeria’s ex-colonial ruler France, and is embroiled in another with neighbouring Morocco. Algiers severed diplomatic ties with Rabat in August over the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Boudjemaa said the main issue at stake was the “huge economic and social challenges of the coming year”. “Several indicators show that the pouvoir (ruling elite) has neither the vision nor the strategy to respond to the crisis,” he said.

South Africa, whose citizens have suddenly become persona-non-grata around the world after the discovery of a new Covid variant in the country, says it is being “punished” and unfairly treated for sounding the alarm. The government in the country worst-hit by the pandemic on the continent, is seething over the stigma it has suffered in the past 48 hours for being the bearer of bad news. The decision by many countries around the world to ban flights from southern Africa following the discovery of the variant, named Omicron, “is akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker,” the foreign affairs ministry said in a statement. “Excellent science should be applauded and not punished,” it added. “New variants have been detected in other countries. Each of those cases have had no recent links with Southern Africa,” yet the global “reaction to those countries is starkly different to cases in southern Africa.” The World Health Organisation has cautioned against imposing travel restrictions due to Omicron.South Africa’s healh ministry slammed the travel restrictions as “draconian”, “panic” and “misdirected” measures which go “against the norms and advice by the WHO”. “We feel some of the leadership of countries are finding scapegoats to deal with what is a worldwide problem,” said Health Minister Joe Phaahla. Pretoria fears the border closures will hurt “families, the travel and tourism sector, businesses” and that it may deter other countries from reporting discoveries of future variants for fear of being ostracised and punished. “Sometimes one gets punished for being transparent, and doing things very quick,” Tulio de Oliveira, a leading virologist who announced the discovery of the Omicron variant, said. Deputy director at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Ahmed Ogwell, added his disgust. “Stop this unscientific knee-jerk travel bans against #Africa,” tweeted Ogwell.”Use evidence for #covid19pandemic — public health measures, testing, vaccines.Travel bans is politics”. “Politics won’t solve pandemics.” Travellers seeking to leave the country also described the swiftly implemented travel bans as impulsive and ill-considered. “They don’t even care about what South African scientists really think at the moment...they are just in a flatspin, in a complete panic about this new variant,” said South African Nica Kruger, 26, scrambling to get a seat on a flight to Dubai yesterday. German university student Ayla Roemer, 28, who arrived in South Africa for a hiking holiday 24 hours earlier, but was flying back today, was surprised at the speed with which the Berlin government acted, banning flights from southern Africa.

Sudan’s military yesterday reinstated Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and promised to release all political detainees after weeks of deadly unrest triggered by a coup, though large crowds took to the streets to reject any deal involving the army. Under an agreement signed with military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Hamdok, first appointed after the overthrow of autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a 2019 uprising, will lead a civilian government of technocrats for a transitional period. The deal faces opposition from pro-democracy groups that have demanded full civilian rule ever since Bashir was ousted and have been angered by the deaths of dozens protesters in the weeks following the October 25 coup. A hero for the protest movement, Hamdok quickly became the villain for some. “Hamdok has sold the revolution,” protesters chanted after the deal was announced. The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a leading protest group, called it “treacherous”. Tens of thousands of people joined rallies in the capital Khartoum and its twin cities of Omdurman and Bahri. Security forces fired bullets and tear gas to disperse them, witnesses said. “Hamdok has disappointed us. Our only option is the street,” said Omar Ibrahim, a 26-year-old protester in Khartoum. The coup triggered mass demonstrations against the military and medics aligned with the protest movement say security forces have killed 40 civilians in increasingly violent crackdowns. Hamdok said he had agreed to the deal to prevent more casualties. “Sudanese blood is precious, let us stop the bloodshed and direct the youth’s energy into building and development,” he said at a signing ceremony broadcast on state television. Burhan said the deal would be inclusive. “We do not want to exclude anyone except, as we’ve agreed, the National Congress Party,” he said, referring to Bashir’s former ruling party. However, the agreement made no mention of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC), the civilian coalition that shared power with the military before the coup. A number of people those present at signing ceremony had political ties to Bashir. The FFC said it did not recognise any agreement with the armed forces. “We affirm our clear and previously announced position: no negotiation and no partnership and no legitimacy for the putschists,” the alliance in a statement. Those who carried out and backed the coup should face justice, it said. Several of the resistance committees that have been organising protests also put out statements rejecting any deal with the military. Hamdok was placed under house arrest when the military seized power, derailing a transition towards elections in 2023.

The bodies of 10 people were found in an overcrowded boat carrying migrants off the coast of Libya, apparently having suffocated, Doctors Without Borders said yesterday. The charity’s Geo Barents rescue ship pulled 99 people from the sinking boat on Tuesday before making the gruesome discovery in the lower deck. “At the bottom of the overcrowded wooden boat, 10 people were found dead,” tweeted the charity, known by its French initials MSF. In a later statement, it said the air was filled with the smell of fuel, saying the victims probably suffocated from the fumes after 13 hours adrift at sea. It took two hours to bring the bodies on board the Geo Barents, where they will be kept pending a dignified burial. MSF described them as “10 avoidable deaths”, adding: “How can we accept this in 2021?” Tens of thousands of people seek to enter Europe each year via the central Mediterranean, leaving from Libya and Tunisia and heading most often for Italy. But the route is deadly - 1,236 people have died in the central Mediterranean so far this year, compared with 858 in the same period of 2020, according to Flavio Di Giacomo of the UN’s Migration Agency, the IOM. He tweeted that the Geo Barents rescue “probably avoided other victims”, saying it showed “the need to increase patrols at sea”. The boat was the third rescued in 24 hours by Geo Barents in waters around Libya and Malta. The charity vessel currently has 186 people on board, including 61 minors, the youngest only 10 months old. They are from various countries including Guinea, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Somalia and Syria, and set off from Libya, the charity said. “On a day like this, when we bring 10 corpses on board our ship, we are once again witnessing Europe’s unwillingness to guarantee a desperately needed system of search and rescue in the central Mediterranean,” said Caroline Willemen, MSF mission head on board the Geo Barents, in a statement. She said the survivors, some of whom had travelled for hours with the bodies of their dead friends and relatives, urgently needed a safe haven to disembark.

Sudanese security forces killed 10 people and wounded dozens yesterday in a crackdown on anti-coup protests, medics said, including seven in northern Khartoum where hundreds of demonstrators were still marching. Most of the casualties were shot “in the head, neck or torso”, said the pro-democracy union of doctors, while the Sudanese Professionals Association, which spearheaded 2019 protests, accused the police of “premeditated killings”. The fatalities in Khartoum raised to 34 the death toll from unrest since the October 25 military takeover, according to the independent Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors. Several rallies broke out across the capital, even though telephone lines were cut and internet services have been disrupted since the power grab. “The people choose civilian rule,” demonstrators chanted, also shouting slogans against Sudan’s ruler, top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Demonstrations also erupted in Port Sudan against the coup which halted a democratic transition that followed the 2019 toppling of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir. Efforts to stem the protests have seen hundreds arrested, including activists, passers-by and journalists. Qatar’s Al Jazeera’s bureau chief was arrested on Sunday and released on Tuesday. The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors has said security forces have also arrested injured people inside Khartoum hospitals. The Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella of unions instrumental in the 2019 protests, denounced “immense crimes against humanity” and accused the security forces of “homicide”. One protester in Khartoum said the “repression has been fierce”. “There has been a lot of violence, continuous tear gas and sound grenades,” 42-year-old Soha said adding that she saw one person with gunshot wounds and that there were many arrests. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Kenya yesterday urged Africans to watch out for rising threats to democracy. He told Sudan’s military the country stood to regain badly-needed international aid if it restores the “legitimacy” of civilian government. Washington has suspended some $700mn in assistance to Sudan since the coup. “If the military puts this train back on its tracks and does what’s necessary, I think the support that has been very strong from the international community can resume,” said Blinken.

Three people died and several dozen were injured in twin suicide bombings targeting Uganda’s capital Kampala yesterday, police said, blaming a “domestic terror group” linked to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) for the attacks. An armed group active in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the ADF has been linked to the so-called Islamic State by Washington and blamed for a string of recent attacks in Uganda. Two suicide bombers on motorbikes - disguised as local “boda boda” motorcycle taxi drivers - detonated a device near the entrance to parliament, killing a passerby, while a third attacker targeted a checkpoint near the central police station, leaving two people dead, police spokesman Fred Enanga said. The explosions in Kampala’s central business district occurred within minutes of each other, shortly after 10am, and left “bodies shattered and scattered”, he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Enanga told reporters: “The indications are that this is a domestic terror group linked to the ADF.” Police foiled a third attack, recovering an improvised explosive device from the home of an alleged suicide bomber who was shot and injured, and were in pursuit of other members of the group, Enanga added. The explosion near the police station shattered windows while the one near parliament set cars parked nearby on fire, Uganda’s Assistant Inspector General of police Edward Ochom said earlier. The Ugandan Red Cross said 21 of the 33 people injured were police officers. The attacks follow two blasts last month — a bus explosion near Kampala that wounded many people and a bombing at a roadside eatery in the capital that killed one woman. Police said both those explosions were carried out by the ADF. Uganda has also blamed the group for a foiled bomb attack in August on the funeral of an army commander who led a major offensive against Al Shebaab militants in Somalia. Salim Uhuru, mayor of Kampala Central, said he was near the police station when he heard the blast.  “It was so loud. I ran towards the police station and saw one policeman I know dead on the ground. His body was scattered like mincemeat,” Uhuru said. Kyle Spencer, the executive director of Uganda’s Internet Exchange Point, said that the explosions had sparked panic. “The road to parliament is closed off, there are people just crying, everyone else is just trying to get away from these areas,” he said. Parliament cancelled its session yesterday, asking members to avoid the area “as security forces are working hard to restore order”. The premises were put under tight security, with heavily armed soldiers securing the area as forensics officers in white overalls inspected the blast site for clues. Opposition leader Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, said he was “very sad” about the bombings, which were also condemned by the African Union. Ugandan police last month arrested a number of alleged ADF operatives and warned that extremists were believed to be plotting a new attack on “major installations”. “Today’s breakthrough attacks show that we still need to do more, to pre-empt, penetrate and prevent deadly attacks by domestic extremists in the days to come,” police spokesman Enanga said.

The entry of two men accused of war crimes into Libya’s presidential race has ramped up the perils of an election meant to help end years of chaos but which could instead set the fuse for a new conflict. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, wanted internationally for his role in crushing the 2011 revolution that toppled his father declared on Sunday, while eastern commander Khalifa Haftar, who laid siege to Tripoli from 2019-20, announced his bid  yesterday. Gaddafi’s announcement quickly led to street protests that temporarily closed election offices around Libya, and to a statement by the council of a major city demanding his ejection from the race. Haftar’s candidacy could trigger similar scenes, and threats to boycott the vote altogether. Less than six weeks before the vote is due to take place, the discord over who should be allowed to run in the country’s first direct election for president looks poised to worsen. Though Haftar, Gaddafi and other divisive figures from Libya’s violent recent past were expected to take part despite bitter opposition, their actual registration as candidates is loading fresh gunpowder into the keg, some Libyans fear. It tests an approach that those supporting the push for elections privately say they want to see — subjecting Libya’s most prominent figures to national judgement via the ballot box. “People are being asked to take a risk that a democratic process could result in something they find abhorrent...maybe it’s better to let the people decide,” said a diplomat. Those who support that approach — including prominent candidates — say it is the only way to move towards a lasting political resolution, and that cancelling or delaying the vote would be far more destabilising than holding it. Eastern factions have warned they may not accept the unity government’s rule beyond the Dec 24 date set for the vote, and that they could break off and again form a rival government if it does not go ahead. However, the risks of pushing ahead without clear and widespread agreement on the rules governing the vote, including who should be allowed to run, remain evident. Libyans remember the catastrophic aftermath of the last internationally backed elections in 2014, when a previous parliament and powerful armed groups rejected the election, citing a court ruling. Those disputes ignited an already smouldering schism between eastern and western factions, plunging Libya into the war between rival administrations in Tripoli and Benghazi that the latest peace process is intended to resolve. Despite a year of peace since Haftar’s assault on Tripoli was turned back, bringing the two sides to accept a unity government and elections, the wounds of that war are still raw. Haftar’s attack on Tripoli left large parts of the city in ruins and its southern suburbs salted with deadly booby traps that have killed civilians. An allied group is accused of scores of killings in nearby Tarhouna and burying victims in mass graves. Haftar denies the abuses. Gaddafi is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes it says state security forces committed in 2011. A Tripoli court sentenced him to death for those same crimes in 2015 when he appeared via videolink. He also denies war crimes. Activists wonder whether any election held in areas where armed forces are aligned with one of the candidates can be fair even with international monitoring, adding to their qualms about the vote. Meanwhile, the only election law now on the table — issued in controversial circumstances by parliament speaker Aguila Saleh who is himself an expected candidate — may rule out a likely frontrunner: Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah. Saleh’s law said any officeholder entering the race would have to step down from their duties three months before the vote, which he and Haftar both did in late September. Dbeibah, who had already promised not to run for office when he was appointed to lead the interim government in March through a UN process, has not stepped down and has called Saleh’s voting law “flawed”.

The EU and Belarusian foreign policy chiefs spoke directly about the migrant crisis for the first time yesterday, even as Brussels prepares to impose sweeping new sanctions for human trafficking that Minsk said would be futile and “counter-productive”. Josep Borrell said he had spoken to Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei by phone about “the precarious humanitarian situation” at the Belarus-Poland border — the EU’s eastern frontier. “The current situation is unacceptable and must stop. People should not be used as weapons,” Borrell said in a tweet. In Belarus’s statement about the conversation, Makei said any sanctions would be “hopeless” and “counter-productive”. Thousands of migrants from the Middle East are camped out on the EU-Belarus border, creating a stand-off between the EU and US on one side and Belarus and its ally Russia on the other. Western countries accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime of engineering the crisis by encouraging migrants to come to Belarus and then taking them to the border since the summer. Belarus denies the charges and blames the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also rejected accusations of being involved in the crisis and has urged the EU to speak directly to Belarus. Poland earlier yesterday said dozens of migrants were detained after crossing from Belarus and warned of a possible larger breakthrough. Local police said on Twitter that 50 migrants had crossed the heavily guarded border near the village of Starzyna “by force” on Saturday. Aid agencies say at least 10 migrants have died on the border so far and have warned of a humanitarian crisis unfolding as temperatures drop below freezing, urging a de-escalation. But Medycy na Granicy (Doctors on the Border), a Polish charity, said it was suspending its activities yesterday after five cars used by its team were smashed up by unknown assailants. The charity’s work has been hampered before. Last week, someone let out the air from their ambulance’s tyres while they were helping migrants. On the Belarusian side, officials said there are 2,000 migrants including pregnant women and children in the biggest camp near the village of Bruzgi. Belarusian authorities have delivered aid including tents and heaters — a move that could make the camp a semi-permanent presence on the EU border. Poland has refused to allow the migrants in and has accused Belarus of preventing them from leaving. Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski on Saturday said a rumour was being spread among the migrants that today Poland would allow them through and coaches would come from Germany to pick them up. The government has sent a text message to all foreign mobile phones along the border saying this was “a total lie and nonsense”. “Those who spread such rumours seek to encourage the migrants to storm the border,” the message reads. EU foreign ministers are also due to meet today to widen the sanctions already imposed on Belarus for its crackdown on opponents of Lukashenko, who has ruled the country for nearly 30 years. Borrell said ministers would approve sanctions on anyone taking part in migrant trafficking, including airlines, travel agencies and officials. “Lukashenko got it wrong. He thought that by acting in this way he would twist our arm and force us to cancel the sanctions. The opposite is happening,” he told the Journal du Dimanche, a French weekly. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said one of the measures being envisaged was the “complete closure of the border to cut off the regime from any economic benefits”. Speaking to Poland’s PAP news agency, Morawiecki also said that the whole of the EU “should contribute jointly” to a Polish project to build a wall along the border. One of the routes taken by the migrants has been through flights from Turkey and Syria. Following pressure from EU diplomats, Turkey has now banned Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis from flying to Belarus. Private Syrian carrier Cham Wings Airlines has also said it is halting flights to Minsk.