Kenya’s Wildlife and Tourism ministry says that climate change is now a bigger threat to elephant conservation than poaching.

Read and watch it all.

Climate change killing elephants, says Kenya https://t.co/ncUhsuRzxb

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 28, 2022

The Democratic Republic of Congo, home to one of the largest old-growth rainforests on earth, is auctioning off vast amounts of land in a push to become “the new destination for oil investments,” part of a global shift as the world retreats on fighting climate change in a scramble for fossil fuels.

The oil and gas blocks, which will be auctioned in late July, extend into Virunga National Park, the world’s most important gorilla sanctuary, as well as tropical peatlands that store vast amounts of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere and from contributing to global warming.

“If oil exploitation takes place in these areas, we must expect a global climate catastrophe, and we will all just have to watch helplessly,” said Irene Wabiwa, who oversees the Congo Basin forest campaign for Greenpeace in Kinshasa.

Read it all.

A term I learned reporting this story: climate colonialism.
Western countries that built their prosperity on fossil fuels that emit planet-warming fumes demanding Africa forgo reserves of oil/gas/coal to protect everyone else. w/@ruthmaclean https://t.co/7spghRsO85

— Dionne Searcey (@dionnesearcey) July 25, 2022

I feel i am uniquely qualified to speak on international terrorism because I have survived at least three attempts to assassinate me. They came during my first term as Somalia’s president from September 2012 to February 2017. The first attempt was on my very first day in office; the second while I was walking to pray at the mosque in the presidential compound; and the third while I was on my way to visit Marka, a town we had liberated from Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate and jihadist group which operates in Somalia.

Terrorism still wreaks havoc across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and East Asia, and most of the world, including Europe and America, are on high alert, according to the 2022 Global Terrorism Index (gti) compiled by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace. Although the report states that deaths from global terrorism are in decline, it does highlight that Africa accounted for a staggering 48% of them in 2021. Somalia alone accounted for 8% of all deaths, on par with Mali and Niger and surpassed only by Afghanistan (where 20% of deaths occurred) and Burkina Faso (10%).

Given that most prominent terrorist groups have expansive international objectives and networks, and are aided by sophisticated technology, nobody should take comfort from a relatively low score in the gti. It is arguable that terrorism is not on the wane, but that terrorists are reinventing themselves and adapting. We must do the same.

Read it all.

Almighty and everlasting God, who didst enkindle the flame of thy love in the heart of thy holy martyr Bernard Mizeki: Grant to us, thy humble servants, a like faith and power of love, that we who rejoice in his triumph may profit by his example; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

#BernardMizeki is remembered today. He gave his life as translator and evangelist among the MaShona in what is present-day Zimbabwe. He was murdered on this day in 1896 in a tribal uprising and is revered throughout Central Africa as a witness to the gospel of Christ. pic.twitter.com/ysXfvjwOGc

— Parish of Moseley (@ParishofMoseley) June 18, 2022

The mighty Congo River has become a highway for sprawling flotillas of logs — African teak, wenge and bomanga in colors of licorice, candy bars and carrot sticks. For months at a time, crews in the Democratic Republic of Congo live aboard these perilous rafts, piloting the timber in pursuit of a sliver of profit from the dismantling of a crucial forest.

The biggest rafts are industrial-scale, serving mostly international companies that see riches in the rainforest. But puny versions also make their way downriver, tended by men and their families who work and sleep atop the floating logs.

Forests like these pull huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air, making them essential to slow global warming. The expanded scale of illegal logging imperils their role in protecting humanity’s future.

The Congo Basin rainforest, second in size only to the Amazon, is becoming increasingly vital as a defense against climate change as the Amazon is felled. However, the Democratic Republic of Congo for several years in a row has been losing more old-growth rainforest, research shows, than any country except for Brazil.

In this lawless trade, the river is the artery to the world. In some places, where once-towering trees are prepared for the journey, the water itself is stained caramel from the bleeding sap of felled trees.

Read it all.

How Logging Is Affecting the Democratic Republic of Congo: The Congo River Basin rainforest, vital in the fight against climate change, has long been protected in part by its remoteness. But the river acts as a highway for… https://t.co/0qXA65d8mN #CongoRiver #LoggingIndustry

— Michael (@Mic4815162342) June 15, 2022

A South Sudanese bishop who was forced with his family into exile before he was one year old, the Right Revd Anthony Poggo, has been named as the next Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. Bishop Anthony Poggo, the former Bishop of Kajo-Keji in the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, is currently the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Adviser on Anglican Communion Affairs.

Bishop Anthony was selected for his new role by a sub-committee of the Anglican Communion’s Standing Committee following a competitive recruitment process led by external consultants.

He will take up his new role in September, succeeding the Most Revd Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who steps down after next month’s Lambeth [partial gathering] of Anglican bishops, which is being held in Canterbury, Kent, from 26 July to 8 August.

Read it all.

A South Sudanese bishop who was forced with his family into exile before he was one year old, the Right Revd Anthony Poggo, has been named as the next Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. #Anglicans #AnglicanNewshttps://t.co/KVsx1QMO6K

— Anglican Communion News Service (@AnglicanNews) June 14, 2022

The Government’s “offshoring” policy, under which the first people are due to be deported to Rwanda as early as Tuesday, “should shame us as a nation”, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and 23 other bishops, have said.

The policy was included in the Nationality and Borders Act, which came into law in April despite objections and attempted amendments from bishops and other peers (News, 29 April). It was explicitly criticised by Archbishop Welby in his Easter sermon (News, 27 April), and reportedly by the Prince of Wales last week, who is said to have called it “appalling” in a private conversation.

Last week, campaigners failed to win an injunction against the policy in the High Court, which ruled that it was in the “public interest” for the Government to carry it out. An appeal on Monday was rejected for the same reason. A full hearing on whether the policy is lawful is due to take place next month.

In a letter due to be published in The Times on Tuesday, the full complement of bishops who sit in the House of Lords have written: “Whether or not the first deportation flight leaves Britain today for Rwanda, this policy should shame us as a nation.” The letter continues: “The shame is our own, because our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

BREAKING: The entire senior leadership of the Church of England (every bishop in the House of Lords) has joined to decry the Rwanda scheme as "an immoral policy that shames Britain" in letter to @TheTimes https://t.co/HUIciprbGu

— Kaya Burgess (@kayaburgess) June 13, 2022

Nigerian security officials suspect extremists from Islamic State’s affiliate in west Africa were behind an attack on a Catholic church last weekend that killed dozens.

Forty people are now thought to have died after gunmen stormed St Francis Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State, on Sunday, and 61 survivors are still being treated in hospital, according to local authorities. The total is double an earlier estimate.

Nigeria’s National Security Council said on Thursday that the attack was the work of the Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) group, apparently reinforcing fears that the militants, who have been restricted to the north-east for many years, are looking to expand their influence and reach to other parts of the country. Ondo, in the south-west, has long been considered one of the safer parts of the country.

Read it all.

Islamic State affiliate suspected of Catholic church massacre, Nigeria says https://t.co/kEsLBzwmLv

— The Guardian (@guardian) June 9, 2022

O Almighty God, who by thy holy apostle hast taught us to set our affection on things above: Grant us so to labour in this life as ever to be mindful of our citizenship in those heavenly places whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end.

Ascension of Christ from the 6th century Rabbula Gospels
Originally from Roman (Byzantine) Syria, now at Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana in Florence

Today is the feast day of the Ascension of Christ pic.twitter.com/QPU5Jjlvjm

— The Byzantine Legacy (@ByzantineLegacy) June 10, 2021

Thousands of churches across Nigeria demanded an end to sectarian killings on Sunday, horrified by the mob assault on a female university student accused of blasphemy. But fearful of more violence, their approach differed significantly—by geography.

“The overwhelming majority of our churches in the south participated, many going to the streets in peaceful protest,” said Testimony Onifade, senior special assistant to the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). “Gathering together, we condemned this gruesome act and demanded the government identify, arrest, and prosecute the culprits.”

But in the north, where Muslims represent the majority of Nigerians, John Hayab described 20 minutes set aside to pray for divine intervention. The president of CAN’s Kaduna state chapter lauded the “solemn” ceremony observed by all northern denominations, amid a ban on protests by local authorities as some Muslims had threatened counterdemonstrations.

Instead, a select group of 120 Christian leaders gathered in a Kaduna city church, guarded by police and security agencies.

Read it all.

Nigerian Christians Protest Deborah’s Death https://t.co/8r6BOFYIKO my new article for @CTmagazine, on the mob murder of a female university student accused of blasphemy

— Jayson Casper (@jnjcasper) May 25, 2022

Families have become desperate for food and water. Millions of children are malnourished. Livestock, which pastoralist families rely on for food and livelihoods, have died.

The drought stretches far beyond this small Kenyan village and the UN’s World Food Programme says up to 20 million people in East Africa are at risk of severe hunger.

Ethiopia is battling the worst drought in almost half a century and in Somalia 40% of the population are at risk of starvation.

Read it all.

‘The world is not looking this way’: a fourth season of failed rains is causing one of the worst droughts East Africa has seen in decades.https://t.co/jMb6HdnIxp

— Tom Claes (@TomClaes5) May 15, 2022

Prominent faith leaders in Africa, including Anglican and Roman Catholic archbishops, have implored the world’s governments to support a People’s Vaccine movement, to ensure that the world’s most vulnerable people have protection against the Covid-19 virus.

On the eve of the global Covid-19 summit of world leaders convened by President Biden, 45 faith leaders issued a joint People Vaccine Alliance statement, calling for an “immediate action to address the massive inequities in the global pandemic response”.

The statement, issued on Thursday, says: “We are one global family, where our problems are tightly interconnected. However, we know the greatest impediment to people getting their vaccinations, tests, and treatment is inequity.

“World leaders must renew their approach to tackling the response to the global pandemic by treating Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatment — not as commodities but as public goods, which all people have the right to access. We encourage world leaders to unite and stand in solidarity with people from low-income countries by supporting a People’s Vaccine.”

Read it all.

“World leaders must renew their approach to tackling the response to the global pandemic by treating Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatment — not as commodities but as public goods, which all people have the right to access.” https://t.co/Z4Qu9Mte4M

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) May 13, 2022

Humanitarian organisations have warned that the huge response to the war in Ukraine is overshadowing other crises around the world that are in need of urgent attention.

Charities and NGOs have begun urging governments and individuals not to forget the millions who are suffering in other countries.

The United Nations has warned that the situation in Somalia, where 4.5 million people are at risk of starvation owing to the worst drought in a decade, is deteriorating rapidly. The focus of the international community on Ukraine was sucking all the oxygen out of the room, Adam Abdelmoula, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, said last week.

The UN has said that $1.46 billion (£1.1 billion) is required to meet the immediate needs of Somalis. Only three per cent of that has been secured.

“The outlook was already grim prior to the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis,” Mr Abdelmoula said. “We have been overshadowed by the crisis in Tigray, Yemen, Afghanistan — and now Ukraine seems to suck all the oxygen that is in the room. . .

Read it all.

UN on Somalia – "If nothing is done, it is projected that, by the summer of this year, 350,000 of the 1.4 million severely malnourished children in the country, will perish." https://t.co/ExlOWiuCtY

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) April 11, 2022

For centuries, they called the foreboding building on a hill above this capital city the Kissy Lunatic Asylum. It was built in the early 1800s by the British colonial administration, and behind the high walls, patients were kept in chains. People here say the stench seeped from the brick walls, and the screams of patients, whose psychosis and trauma were untreated by medication or therapy, echoed out the narrow, barred windows.

Today a small wooden sign hangs over the front desk in the outpatient department: “Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital: Chain-free since 2018.” The sunny corridors of the newly renovated facility flash with the fuchsia uniforms of psychiatric nursing students. The shelves of the pharmacy are lined with the latest antipsychotics and antidepressants. Children bounce on a trampoline at a cheerful clinic just for them. And six residents are on their way to being the first psychiatrists ever trained in this country.

The transformation at Kissy is part of an extraordinary effort to build a mental health care system from scratch in one of the poorest countries in the world. The residents work the wards and see patients in the packed outpatient clinic, under the supervision of three consulting psychiatrists. They are the only three in the country’s entire health system — a staggering ratio, but a threefold increase from decades when there was just one, who paid the patients at Kissy a weekly visit.

Read it all.

[Highlight] This Psychiatric Hospital Used to Chain Patients. Now It Treats Them. @ https://t.co/pSWBOBk3BB #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthMatter #mentalhealth

— Mental Health Updates (@mental_updates) April 11, 2022

A quarter of Africa’s population is facing a food-security crisis driven by severe drought, raging wars and a rise in world food prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Tuesday.

Some 346 million people, from Mauritania in the west to the Horn of Africa in the east, are affected by food insecurity, Dominik Stillhart, the agency’s global operations director, told reporters in Nairobi.

“What we don’t want to see is the response that comes too late, and that is why it is so important to draw attention to the situation now,” Mr. Stillhart said.

Russia and Ukraine were major grain suppliers before the war, and the conflict is causing pain across the developing world, spurring price shocks, constraining imports of basic commodities and causing food shortages, with poorer nations in Africa especially affected.

Read it all.

A quarter of Africa’s population is facing a food-security crisis driven by severe drought, raging wars and a rise in world food prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Tuesday https://t.co/KVUqd9HOUr

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 5, 2022

There are no Covid fears here.

The district’s Covid-19 response center has registered just 11 cases since the start of the pandemic, and no deaths. At the regional hospital, the wards are packed — with malaria patients. The door to the Covid isolation ward is bolted shut and overgrown with weeds. People cram together for weddings, soccer matches, concerts, with no masks in sight.

Sierra Leone, a nation of eight million on the coast of Western Africa, feels like a land inexplicably spared as a plague passed overhead. What has happened — or hasn’t happened — here and in much of sub-Saharan Africa is a great mystery of the pandemic.

The low rate of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in West and Central Africa is the focus of a debate that has divided scientists on the continent and beyond. Have the sick or dead simply not been counted? If Covid has in fact done less damage here, why is that? If it has been just as vicious, how have we missed it?

The answers “are relevant not just to us, but have implications for the greater public good,” said Austin Demby, Sierra Leone’s health minister, in an interview in Freetown, the capital.

Read it all.

It’s a pandemic mystery: Why has Covid been so much less lethal in sub-Saharan Africa? Research shows at least two-thirds of people have been exposed to the virus. Yet they’re not getting sick or dying. Are they? https://t.co/WphNh2Jdfq

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) March 24, 2022

Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby may undertake their much anticipated, but delayed joint trip to South Sudan in “the next few months” to encourage peace in a country still recovering from a bloody civil war and a humanitarian crisis.

“God willing, sometime in the next few months, perhaps year, we will go and see them in Juba, not in Rome, and see what progress can be made,” said the head of the global Anglican Communion on Feb. 6, referring to South Sudan’s leaders.

“That is history,” said Welby of the likely trip that will mark the first time the two ecumenical leaders have traveled together in such a capacity.

Francis and Welby had sought to visit the war-torn country in 2017, although the country’s violent conflict and deteriorating conditions had foiled those plans.

Read it all.

Pope Francis and Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby may undertake their much anticipated joint trip to South Sudan in the next few months, reports NCR's @cwwhiteNCR. https://t.co/OvsHXbQQzE

— NCR (@NCRonline) February 7, 2022

The BBC has heard reports of young people killing themselves or harming themselves and others.

Medical staff in the capital Freetown say that 90% of the male admissions to the central psychiatric ward are due to Kush use.

Police are battling to win the war against the drug.

Read it all.

Kush: Sierra Leone's new illegal drug https://t.co/JEfuTP7fUl pic.twitter.com/qtzw2hcazM

— World News (@Worldnews_Media) February 7, 2022

“I have just seen my brother’s face. Our faces are alike, even the mouth. I have also seen the legs, those are my brother’s. I have no doubt it’s him.”

A distressed Irene Waheto has just stepped out of the hospital mortuary in Yala, western Kenya.

At least 19 unclaimed bodies have been waiting for identification. They were retrieved over the past two years from the nearby River Yala in different stages of decomposition.

Ms Waheto is making frantic calls to her family in Nyeri, a town nearly 300km (185 miles) to the east.

“It is Ndirangu, I am sure it is him,” she cries down the phone.

But how his body ended up in a river so far from home is not clear.

Read it all.

The BBC’s ⁦@FerdyOmondi⁩ reports from Yala in western where over a dozen bodies have been retrieved from a river. Their deaths so far unexplained. Security forces deny they are behind the deaths. https://t.co/Lzui9vdnuZ

— Catherine Byaruhanga (@cathkemi) January 22, 2022

Children in Uganda have expressed their joy at finally returning to school nearly two years after they were closed because of Covid.

“I am really excited because it’s been a long time without seeing our teachers. And we have missed out a lot,” Joel Tumusiime told the BBC.

“I am glad to be back at school,” echoed another, Mercy Angel Kebirungi.

But after one of the world’s longest school closures, authorities warned at least 30% of students may never return.

Some have started work, while others have become pregnant or married early, the country’s national planning authority said.

Read it all.

Many Ugandan children have not been to school for almost two years.

"I am really excited because it's been a long time without seeing our teachers," Joel Tumusiime told the BBC.

But authorities warn that at least 30% of pupils may not return.https://t.co/JGI3yvU6kA

— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) January 10, 2022

South Africa’s noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country’s dramatic omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.

Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint — far from conclusive yet — that omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike.

South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.

After hitting a high of nearly 27,000 new cases nationwide on Thursday, the numbers dropped to about 15,424 on Tuesday. In Gauteng province — South Africa’s most populous with 16 million people, including the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria — the decrease started earlier and has continued.

Read it all.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country’s dramatic omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say. https://t.co/2i70PgAtz0

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) December 22, 2021

Having expanded as a civilising religion during the era of European colonialism, the growth of Christianity in Africa in the decades after the 1960s has revealed a tendency to reject European patronage, choosing either to ‘pentecostalise’ (to various extents) and, following American-styled expressions of Christianity, to globalise or to embrace a new identity as independent African denominations.

This globalisation of African Christianity has been influenced greatly by American Evangelicalism and with this came the legitimisation of celebrity-styled preachers and the prosperity gospel which has, in turn, led to some African evangelical and Pentecostal preachers using fear to dominate and exploit vulnerable people.

In Western discourses on African Christianity, these prosperity-preaching ministries dominate the conversation. However, a majority of African Christians, especially in rural Africa, have no clue what it is.

Soyinka is against charlatanism, fundamentalism and extremism in religion. He has written and spoken at length about what he perceives as the imperialist tendencies in the two leading religions. He gives many examples of abuse of power and the weaponisation of fear in his creative writings as well as in newspaper articles, lectures (particularly the 2004 BBC Reith Lectures that resulted in his book, Climate of Fear), and other works.

What is particularly troubling here is his tendency to demonise all religion without acknowledging the good that it stands for.

Read it all.

#Trending | Wole Soyinka releases first novel in 48 years https://t.co/0G7kGczH66. pic.twitter.com/sZ6NI79QPw

— City Press (@City_Press) December 19, 2021

With U.S. retailers willing to pay almost any price to get their goods to American shores in time for the holidays, ocean carriers have redeployed container ships from the developing world to the more lucrative Asia-to-United States trade lanes, where rates for some shipments this fall were 15 times pre-pandemic levels, according to the Freightos index.

That’s helped fill American store shelves — and carriers’ coffers — but it has battered many African shippers, according to interviews with more than 30 maritime analysts, shippers, freight forwarders and cargo carriers in the United States, Africa and elsewhere.

Already lagging in coronavirus vaccinations, Africa risks becoming collateral damage in the supply wars. The International Monetary Fund says the 45 nations of sub-Saharan Africa are mired in the slowest economic recovery of any region, with supply chain disruptions helping fuel inflation at roughly twice its pre-pandemic level.

“Africa, sadly, I can’t think of any other continent that is last on the rung. Africa will be the last to come out of this,” [Aditya] Awtani said.

Read it all.

Africa is left with the fallout of the US supply chain crisis

Ships have been diverted to the US/Europe, leaving many developing nations w/out basic supplies.

More great supply chain reporting from @davidjlynch https://t.co/flCTdUUODa

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) December 17, 2021

In the past seven years tens of thousands of Yazidis kept as sex slaves by Isis fighters, girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and Rohingya women dragged from their huts and gang-raped by Burmese soldiers, have courageously come forward and told their stories, yet there has only been a single prosecution.

No one is better qualified to write about the situation than this astonishingly brave Congolese gynaecological surgeon. His Panzi hospital in eastern Congo has treated more than 60,000 raped women and girls over the past 20 years. Some arrive so damaged that he has carried out multiple operations to try to reconstruct them.

One of the most heroic men I have ever met, Mukwege literally risks his life to save women. After a series of threats and assassination attempts, he lives almost as a prisoner on the hospital site, guarded by UN peacekeepers.

Far from being supported by the Congolese state, he does all of this in the face of a government so craven it tried to fine him $20,000 for collecting rainwater on the hospital roof, insisting that rain belongs to the state.

Read it all (subscription).

@DenisMukwege: From the detention centres in Belarus to the Uighur internment camps in China to the Tigray women in Ethiopia, there is an epidemic of sexual violence in conflict.https://t.co/hsO71QBJat

— Civil Courage Prize (@TrainFoundation) December 13, 2021

But to Joseph, Mary’s perceived sin did not make her an outcast. He knew she deserved love and protection. The NIV beautifully combines Joseph’s Jewish religious culture and his personal spirituality in one sentence: “Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly” (Matt. 1:19).

Here, we see that Joseph isn’t the grumpy, emasculated husband of Christmas legend. Even before he received God’s message about Jesus, Joseph’s demonstrated love for Mary and his commitment to protect her dignity overpowered any legalism. Joseph’s behavior portrays genuine masculinity and Bible-certified righteousness.

The situation, of course, isn’t what he had first imagined. In a dream, an angel told him Mary’s pregnancy was of divine origin. Joseph dismissed his previous plans and agreed to obey just as quickly and simply as Mary had accepted that she was pregnant before marriage (Matt. 1:24; Luke 1:38).

Such a positive response to such a difficult and risky circumstance would have been impossible in a spiritually dull, legalistic mind. A legalistic man might have quickly dismissed the angel’s message as hallucination, as it seemed to contradict the law. Joseph’s spirituality was of such a kind that he was able to value the will of the lawgiver more than the law, something that eluded many sophisticated theologians and religious leaders (Matt. 15:3–9), not to mention Jesus’ disciples.

Read it all.

Joseph could have been filled with resentment, but he wasn't.

"I’ve seen how difficult that is," writes @Aniyonizigiye, especially "for men who have had to flee their homes and deal with the frustrations of providing without stability."

How did he do it? https://t.co/Z69fpvrfRf

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 13, 2021

The mother of four shakes the grubby plastic jerry can and sighs. “It’s not really enough,” she says, gesturing first to the almost empty five litre container, then the skinny children peering through the doorway. “But it has to be enough for now.”

Not so long ago, water was plentiful in this hot and arid part of southern Madagascar, an island some 250 miles off the coast of Africa. Then the drought descended.

In the last two to three years the price of water has jumped 300 per cent, in a region where 91 per cent of people earn less than $1.90 a day. Incomes here are inconsistent at best, but a family selling two to three bags of charcoal a month could expect to earn between 20,000 and 30,000 Malagasy ariary – $5 to $7.50.

Horariby and her children have a choice: they either trudge 12 kilometres on foot to collect water from the nearest large town, or buy it at twice the price from a cattle drawn cart that comes to her village, piled high with yellow jerry cans.

Read it all 9subscription).

Water scarcity as a result of loss of forests. Madagascar = Hunger + water scarcity + malnutrition. If we do not engage in saving our forests and afforestation of the lands we live on then this is the dead end for all of humanity. https://t.co/SJ21TLvjGe

— Veeresh Shivalingappa Sajjan (@sajjanveereshs) December 7, 2021

Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials.

The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon.

Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and his son and heir apparent, Vice President Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue, to reject China’s overtures.

“As part of our diplomacy to address maritime-security issues, we have made clear to Equatorial Guinea that certain potential steps involving [Chinese] activity there would raise national-security concerns,” said a senior Biden administration official.

The great-power skirmishing over a country that rarely draws outside attention reflects the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing. The two countries are sparring over the status of Taiwan, China’s testing of a hypersonic missile, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and other issues.

Read it all.

"US finds itself maneuvering to try to block #China from projecting its military power from new overseas bases, from Cambodia to the #UAE. In #EquatorialGuinea, [#PRC] likely [has] an eye on #Bata..already has a #Chinese-built deep-water commercial #port"https://t.co/JMIF9yMa0w

— Andrew Erickson 艾立信 (@AndrewSErickson) December 6, 2021

Asking a question in the House of Lords, Bishop Paul Butler said the omicron variant showed that the virus “knows no national boundaries.”

He said: “In the light of the new omicron variant that has dominated the news over the weekend, my colleague Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town urged those of us in rich countries to do better at narrowing inequality of vaccination rates, which are 7% in Africa and 70% in Europe.

“We must acknowledge that this virus knows no national boundaries and will spread, mutate and return to us in the way that we are seeing, so we need a global approach, not simply a bilateral approach.

Read it all.

‘Virus knows no national boundaries’ – Bishop calls for vaccine equity https://t.co/oW6MZUzre1

— Heartsong Live (@heartsonglive1) November 30, 2021

For now, there’s no evidence that Omicron causes more severe disease than previous variants. And it’s also not clear yet how quickly Omicron can spread from person to person.

Some earlier variants, such as Beta and Mu, had evolved a strong ability to evade immune defenses. But they never became a serious threat to the world because they proved to be poor at transmitting.

Some mutations in Omicron suggest that it may indeed transmit well. Three mutations alter a region of the spike protein called the furin cleavage site, which is already known to help the spike protein attach more effectively to cells.

But Dr. Hanage said he was not yet convinced by the South African data that Omicron was running rampant across the country. “I think it’s too early to be definitive,” he said.

Read it all.

New 'Omicron' Variant Stokes Concern but Vaccines May Still Work – The New York Times https://t.co/g6iYz3Rqto

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) November 27, 2021

Growing at unprecedented rates, and shaped by forces both familiar and new, dozens of African cities will join the ranks of humanity’s biggest megalopolises between now and 2100.

Several recent studies project that by the end of this century, Africa will be the only continent experiencing population growth. Thirteen of the world’s 20 biggest urban areas will be in Africa — up from just two today — as will more than a third of the world’s population.

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How Africa will become the center of the world’s urban future. African cities are some of the fastest growing in the world, and we are investing in urban infrastructure. Urbanisation boosts incomes and regional GDPs. https://t.co/eyv2G9qc9c

— Prof. Mthuli Ncube (@MthuliNcube) November 20, 2021