GENEVA – The United Nations yesterday deplored an intensifying crackdown on the opposition and media in Uganda ahead of next month’s general election, urging impartial investigations into alleged arbitrary arrests, disappearances and “torture.” The UN rights office highlighted “credible reports” indicating that at least 550 people, including members and supporters of the main opposition National...
OSLO – Norway yesterday postponed the first licences to permit deep-sea mining in its Arctic waters for four years, a delay environmentalists hope signals the “nail in the coffin” of the plans. The country was the first in Europe aiming to commence the practice in its waters, but following thorny negotiations, Norway’s minority Labour government...
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa, Eswatini and Zambia were yesterday supposed to begin administering a groundbreaking new HIV-prevention injection in the drug’s first public rollouts in Africa, which has the world’s highest HIV burden. Lenacapavir, taken twice a year, has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV transmission by more than 99.9%, making it functionally...
PADANG – The toll in deadly flooding and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1 100 yesterday as hardest-hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed military personnel to help survivors. Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the entire island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia...
LUANDA – European and African leaders gathered in Angola yesterday for a summit to deepen economic and security ties, with emergency talks on Ukraine also on the cards. France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Kenya’s William Ruto are among dozens of European Union and African leaders expected in Luanda amid a US-European rift over...
GENEVA – The UN on Monday warned that generative AI could become “a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster,” with human rights the first casualty, as powerful tech giants unleash the technology on the world. UN rights chief Volker Turk said generative AI had “tremendous promise” but told the world body’s business and human rights forum that its...
ACCRA – Ghana has received official confirmation from the United States that Washington has fully removed the 15% tariff imposed on the West African nation’s cocoa and agricultural exports, its foreign minister announced Monday. The move comes at a sensitive moment in Ghana-US relations. Accra recently accepted dozens of deportees from the United States, exclusively...
MOGADISHU – Mogadishu is rising, literally, from the ashes of decades of war. Pavements remain scarred by bullet holes and ruined buildings still line many streets, but the city’s cacophony is now one of construction, not destruction. The east African nation saw civil war in the 1990s mutate in the 2000s into an Islamist insurgency...
GAZA CITY – Gaza health authorities said fresh Israeli air strikes killed four people on Thursday as Qatar, a mediator of the weeks-long ceasefire, warned that renewed attacks threatened to undermine the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas. The new strikes came the morning after one of the deadliest days in the Gaza Strip since...
HANOI – A court in Vietnam sentenced a former beauty queen to two years in jail yesterday for falsely promoting gummies as rich in fibre on her social media channels, state media reported. The judges found Nguyen Thuc Thuy Tien guilty of deceiving customers, saying she was aware the fibre content of the candy was...