17, January 2022
World’s 10 richest men doubled their wealth during pandemic 0
The world’s 10 wealthiest men doubled their fortunes during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic as poverty and inequality soared, a report said on Monday.
Oxfam said the men’s wealth jumped from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion, at an average rate of $1.3 billion per day, in a briefing published before a virtual mini-summit of world leaders being held under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.
A confederation of charities that focus on alleviating global poverty, Oxfam said the billionaires’ wealth rose more during the pandemic more than it did the previous 14 years, when the world economy was suffering the worst recession since the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
It called this inequality “economic violence” and said inequality is contributing to the death of 21,000 people every day due to a lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger and climate change.
The pandemic has plunged 160 million people into poverty, the charity added, with non-white ethnic minorities and women bearing the brunt of the impact as inequality soared.
The report follows a December 2021 study by the group which found that the share of global wealth of the world’s richest people soared at a record pace during the pandemic.
Oxfam urged tax reforms to fund worldwide vaccine production as well as healthcare, climate adaptation and gender-based violence reduction to help save lives.
The group said it based its wealth calculations on the most up-to-date and comprehensive data sources available, and used the 2021 Billionaires List compiled by the US business magazine Forbes.
Forbes listed the world’s 10 richest men as: Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, former Microsoft CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, US investor Warren Buffet and the head of the French luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault.
Source: AFP
18, January 2022
Southern Cameroons Crisis: 8 CDC workers in Amba drag-net 0
Eight employees of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), the largest employer in the two Cameroons after the Francophone dominated civil service, were reportedly arrested last week Thursday on the Tiko-Douala road by Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards for defying Interim Government orders which prohibits any work in state-owned plantations in the entire Federal Republic of Ambazonia.
Cameroon Concord News gathered that seven workers and a tractor driver were picked up by Amba fighters after heavy exchange of gunfire with troops loyal to the Biya Francophone regime in Yaounde.
A CDC official who confirmed the incident to our Fako correspondent noted that “There are Cameroon government soldiers everywhere. We don’t know how these Amba fighters do it, because there are soldiers everywhere. We don’t know where they were stationed, to the point of succeeding in taking the workers away.”
The CDC Head Office in a poorly worded statement stated that “It is difficult to know in which direction the employees were taken, let alone where they are being held, if they are still alive. It is also difficult to know the identity of the kidnappers. But in all likelihood, they are alleged separatist militiamen, who have often been used to this type of crime.”
It has been a long time since Amba fighters in the Fako County staged attacks against CDC employees. This latest Amba action has put the CDC back into a state of psychosis as it tries to recover from the horrors of the Southern Cameroons crisis.
By Fon Lawrence in Tiko