The United Nations says it has registered more than 350,000 Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers protections in North Africa so far this year, with 97,000 migrants entering Libya since last April. “It is important to highlight that the challenges do not start in North Africa. A holistic cross-regional response is required that starts at the root of the journeys.,” said ...
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Panama Papers scandal: 28 defendants acquitted
Eight years after 11 million secret financial documents were leaked, more than two dozen defendants were acquitted by a court in Panama Friday. Prosecutors had been seeking prison sentences for money laundering. The Panama papers scandal exposed a network of tax havens involving people like Lionel Messi and Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote to name but a few. “According to ...
Read More »Spain applies to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide
Spain will ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, its foreign minister announced Thursday. Spain is the first European country to take the step after South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in ...
Read More »Deadly strike on Rafah a tragic mishap, Netanyahu says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the strike which killed scores of displaced Palestinians in Rafah was a “tragic mishap”. Speaking in the Israeli parliament, Mr Netanyahu said it was vital that Israel took “every precaution possible” to protect civilians caught up in the fighting in Gaza. He told MPs that an investigation into the incident was under way, but ...
Read More »Two Tunisian journalists jailed pending trial, bolstering fears for free speech
A Tunisian judge on Wednesday ordered the imprisonment of two prominent journalists pending trial, their families and lawyers said, reinforcing fears of a widespread campaign aimed at silencing dissent and curbing free speech. IFM radio journalists Mourad Zghidi and Borhen Bsaiss were detained on Saturday over political comments made on the radio, their lawyers said. Public Prosecution spokesman Mohamed Zaitouna ...
Read More »Heat related deaths on the rise in Europe
Most recently the World Meteorological Organisation and the EU’s climate agency Copernicus have reported that Europe is the fastest-warming continent and its temperatures are rising at roughly twice the global average. Today’s Lancet Countdown report led by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain is looking at what this has meant for health. It says the greatest burden of poor health ...
Read More »UK lawmakers pass bill seeking to gradually phase out smoking
The British government’s plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party. The bill, a key policy announced by Sunak last year, would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after January ...
Read More »Gaza: Number of children killed higher than from four years of world conflict
Amid reports of fresh Israeli airstrikes in Gaza overnight into Wednesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that more children have been killed there in recent months than in four years of conflict worldwide. “This war is a war on children. It is a war on their childhood and their future,” said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, who described as “staggering” ...
Read More »Gaza: ‘Children are dying from hunger’, says UN aid coordinator
“Hunger has reached catastrophic levels,” Jamie McGoldrick, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told journalists at UN Headquarters on Wednesday, describing a two-day visit to war-ravaged Gaza. “Children are dying from hunger,” he said via videolink, as media reports indicate that at least 20 children have succumbed to starvation in the besieged and bombarded enclave, including most ...
Read More »US ‘deeply troubled’ by Ghana’s anti-gay bill
The United States has said it is “deeply troubled” by the passing in Ghana of a stringent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, which it says threatens constitutional freedoms. “The bill would also undermine Ghana’s valuable public health, media and civic spaces, and economy,” the US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement. It has called for the “review of the constitutionality ...
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