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16, September 2021

Russia: Putin to remain in self-isolation after dozens of his entourage catch Covid-19 ⁰

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he would have to spend “a few days” in self-isolation after dozens of people in his entourage fell ill with COVID-19, the TASS news agency reported.

Putin was speaking through a video link at a summit of a Russia-led security bloc which was held in Tajikistan. He had planned to attend in person before the news of the virus outbreak in his inner circle this week.

It was previously unclear how big the outbreak was and how long Putin would remain isolated.

“This is not just one person or two people, there are dozens of people,” he said.

“And now I have to remain in self-isolation for a few days.”

Putin, 68, who has had two shots of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, said this week he was now personally testing its efficiency while the Kremlin said the president himself was healthy.

The Kremlin has had a rigorous regime in place designed to keep Putin away from anyone with COVID-19.

Kremlin visitors have had to pass through special disinfection tunnels, journalists attending his events must undergo multiple PCR tests, and some people he meets are asked to quarantine beforehand and be tested.

Source: REUTERS

16, September 2021

One million Nigerian children to miss school due to threat of violence ⁰

One million Nigerian children will likely stay away from school because of the threat of violence after a series of mass kidnappings and attacks targeting students this year, the UN said on Wednesday.

More than 1,000 pupils have been snatched in mass abductions for ransom by criminal gangs in Nigeria’s northwest and central states since December with dozens still in captivity.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF said there had been 20 attacks on schools in Nigeria this year and more than 1,400 pupils were taken and 16 had died.

Most have been released after ransom negotiations, but only after weeks or months in captivity, often in appalling conditions in rural camps.

“Families and communities remain fearful of sending children back to their classrooms due to the spate of school attacks and student abductions,” UNICEF said in a statement.

More than 37 million Nigerian children are due to start the new school year this month, the agency said, while an estimated one million would likely not return.

Some state governments have temporarily closed up schools after kidnappings.

Northwest and central states have long struggled with tit-for-tat violence between nomadic herder and farmer communities who battle over land and water.

Attacks escalated with the emergence of heavily armed criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, who raid villages, steal cattle and kidnap for ransom.

Bandit gangs this year have targeted schools and colleges in Nigeria’s northwest, snatching pupils and taking them into forest hideouts while they negotiate payments.

Around 70 students abducted nearly a fortnight ago were freed this week in northwest Zamfara State, where the army has started an offensive against bandit kidnap gangs.

Source: AFP

16, September 2021

Football: Solskjaer demands Man Utd response after Champions League defeat ⁰

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer admits Manchester United must “do better” after their embarrassing midweek Champions League defeat as he prepares to take his Premier League leaders to face West Ham.

Aaron Wan-Bissaka was sent off against Young Boys in Tuesday’s opening Group F encounter, with Jesse Lingard’s errant back-pass gifting the Swiss hosts a goal in time added on in a 2-1 win.

But it is a different story in the Premier League, with United — now boasting Cristiano Ronaldo in their ranks again — top of the table after three wins from their first four matches.

“Our attitude is like you’d expect it to be,” Solskjaer said at his pre-match press conference on Thursday. “They’re focused, of course a little disappointed but not too downbeat.

“You know, it’s a setback, we have to do better, and we’ve got five games to get those 10, 12 points that we need.

“Of course it’s not the start we wanted but we’re a good team that can bounce back again.”

The Norwegian boss said teams were judged by outcomes rather than intentions.

“It’s always the outcome that decides what headline we’ll see and very, very rarely is the game either fantastic or really, really bad,” he said. “It just hovers about good or not good enough.

“We know that the expectations are high and we expect more of ourselves as well. The performance level wasn’t up to our standard.”

Lingard, who tweeted how upset he was for his part in the defeat, returns to the London Stadium on Sunday, where he spent a productive spell on loan last season.

The England forward’s Red Devils contract expires at the end of the season and he would be able to talk to foreign clubs about a free transfer as early as January.

But Solskjaer said United were keen to tie the 28-year-old down to a new Old Trafford deal and were talking to him.

“We see him as a Man United player in the future as well,” he said. “Jesse has come back to us after a great spell at West Ham.

“He showed his qualities, he’s back in the England squad and he’s scoring goals for England.

“We really want to see the best of Jesse this season and we hope to see him, we support him, and we hope to keep him here with us. He’s a Red through and through.”

Source: AFP

16, September 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Yerima says he has no magic wand to fix the division among Amba groups ⁰

Exiled Southern Cameroons leader Dabney Yerima says he has no magic wand to fix the existing division among Ambazonian restoration groups in Europe and the US, following the deadlock ever since the abduction of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe in Abuja, Nigeria.

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government made the comment in a telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord News late on Wednesday, saying he has no magic wand to reconcile Southern Cameroons activists and leaders in the diaspora from one of the worst ever personality cult crises and that it takes humility on the part of those in the US and a great plan to achieve the hopes of the Southern Cameroons people.

Vice President Dabney Yerima opined that “I don’t have a magic wand. The recent call for an unnecessary lockdown of Amba land by some front line leaders in the US is an indication that the situation is very difficult” adding that there was no time to lose and no easy path to tackle Southern Cameroons revolution meltdown.

Yerima, however, pledged to work hard for the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to resolve its internal differences which is helping the occupying French-backed French Cameroun forces.

Vice President Dabney Yerima who is currently on an African tour, has promised to revive talks with Southern Cameroons diaspora groups to unlock the unhealthy rivalry and division.

By Isong Asu in London

15, September 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Yerima vows to stop conflicting IG signals from US front line leaders ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has pledged to pursue the issue of unauthorized lockdown of Ambazonia territory by some front line leaders in the USA and to caution the US based Southern Cameroons principal actors to be mindful of the sufferings of Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero.

“Continuing to act as if the Southern Cameroons quest for independence is a Nollywood movie is what is keeping the international community away from our struggle” Dabney Yerima said on Tuesday.

Yerima made the remarks during a meeting of the special committee responsible for Ground Zero Self Defense Operations.

“The Ambazonia Interim Government is committed to its intrinsic duty to liberate the people of Southern Cameroons legally, politically and internationally,” Vice President Yerima stressed.

He also highlighted the necessity of proper consultation before any major decision is made public keeping the memory of all Southern Cameroons martyrs alive.

During the meeting, which was hosted by the Southern Cameroons Department of Foreign Affairs and attended by the representatives of several Ambazonian European think tanks, the participants expressed their views with regard to the unauthorized lockdown of the homeland and concluded that Southern Cameroonians should ignore politics and embrace liberation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

15, September 2021

Emmanuel Macron Is Dancing with the Dictators ⁰

A week after Colonel Mamady Doumbouya seized power in Guinea, France is still unsure how to respond to the crisis unfolding in its former West African colony. For now, it seems content to let multilateral bodies such as the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States try and find a resolution.

They are unlikely to get very far. The AU has suspended Guinea’s membership, and Ecowas has held a “positive” meeting with the coup leader in Conakry, the country’s capital on the Atlantic coast. But there is little hope for a speedy restoration of a civilian government.

The most likely outcome is a junta led by Doumbouya, and the promise of a democratic transition somewhere down the line. That was the compromise formula that followed coups in two other Francophone countries, Mali and Chad, earlier this summer.

That arrangement suited French President Emmanuel Macron just fine. He had offered only muted criticism of the coup in Bamako and endorsed the appointment of the junta in N’Djamena. The promise of democracy in the future allayed the embarrassment of doing business with tyrants for the time being.

But France’s speedy accommodation of military strongmen was bound to inspire other wannabes in Francophone Africa. Doumbouya was among those paying careful attention.

It is not yet known how much time he spent with his fellow Colonel, Mali’s Assimi Goita, when the two men participated in a 2019 U.S.-led military exercise in Burkina Faso. But it can hardly have escaped the Guinean’s attention that Goita was able thereafter to lead two coups — ousting President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020, and then transitional President Bah N’Daw in May — with little more than desultory disapproval from Macron. France suspended joint operations with the Malian military for barely a month.

Ironically, the man Doumbouya ousted was also counting on Macron’s hypocrisy. President Alpha Conde won reelection last year after having forced through a constitutional amendment to allow himself a third term. When the French leader blasted him for this power grab, Conde reckoned forgiveness would follow. After all, Macron had no qualms about congratulating the Ivory Coast’s Alassane Ouattara for having secured a third term with the help of some constitutional jiggery-pokery.

But Doumbouya’s coup comes at an especially awkward moment for the French president, who is limbering up for a reelection run of his own even as his party tries to recover from a humiliating defeat in June’s regional vote. As Macron hits the hustings, his foreign policy record is coming under especially close scrutiny, amid rumblings of disquiet among professional diplomats, who say he is more show than substance.

Improving relations with Francophone African countries, in the face of the growing Chinese, Turkish and Russian influence, has been one of Macron’s priorities. The region has provided him with opportunities to burnish his international stature, including a much-publicized summit earlier this summer. Perhaps more important, the cooperation of former French colonies is crucial to the president’s counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel, the belt of countries south of the Sahara.

These factors may explain why he is leery of antagonizing the new rulers of Mali, Chad and now Guinea. But by handing out yet another free pass to a military strongman, Macron is in effect inviting others to take advantage of his weak hand. Several other leaders in the region will now be looking nervously over their shoulders: Ouattara of the Ivory Coast, Faure Gnassingbe of Togo, Paul Biya of Cameroon and Patrice Talon of Benin.

Even if there are no more coups between now and the French presidential election next April, the democratic retrenchment in Africa will at the very least be a source of embarrassment for Macron. He will only have himself to blame.

Source: Bloomberg L.P.

14, September 2021

Football: Pele leaves ICU after tumor removed ⁰

Brazilian football legend Pele left the intensive care unit of a Sao Paulo hospital on Tuesday after undergoing surgery for a suspected colon tumor.

“The patient Edson Arantes do Nascimento is in good clinical condition and has left the intensive therapy unit. He will be recovering in a room,” the Albert Einstein Hospital said in its latest medical bulletin.

“I continue every day happier, with a lot of disposition to play 90 minutes, plus extra time. We will be together soon!” Pele wrote on Instagram, thanking fans for “thousands of loving messages”.

On Monday night one of his daughters, Kely Nascimento, gave an update on her father’s health on social media, accompanied by a close-up photo of the smiling 80-year-old football mega-star.

“He is doing well post surgery, he is not in pain and is in a good mood (annoyed that he can only eat jello but will persevere!),” Nascimento wrote.

“He will move into a regular room in the next day or two and then go home.”

Her father “is strong and stubborn and with the support and care of the brilliant team at Einstein and all of the love, energy and light that the world is sending, he will get through this!” she wrote.

The suspected tumor was detected during routine tests, according to the hospital, where Pele has been undergoing treatment since August 31.

Considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time, Pele has been in poor health in recent years, and has had various stints in the hospital.

The only player in history to win three World Cups (1958, 1962 and 1970), Pele burst onto the global stage at just 17 with dazzling goals, including two in the final against hosts Sweden, as Brazil won the World Cup for the first time in 1958.

“O Rei” (The King) went on to have one of the most storied careers in sport, scoring more than 1,000 goals before retiring in 1977.

Source: AFP

14, September 2021

Let us buy Covid jabs, pleads Africa ⁰

Africa wants to buy Covid-19 vaccines, rather than keep waiting for donor-funded doses to arrive, the African Union said Tuesday, imploring producers to give the continent a fair shot at market access.

The AU also urged manufacturing nations to lift export bans so the continent can begin to address for itself the glaring inequity in access to coronavirus jabs, as wealthy nations hog available doses.

“Vaccine sharing is good. But we shouldn’t have to be relying on vaccine sharing,” Strive Masiyiwa, the AU’s Covid-19 special envoy, told a press conference at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

“We want to buy from those same manufacturers.”

The major Covid-19 vaccine producers have a moral responsibility to ensure equitable access to end the pandemic, he said, but “those manufacturers know very well that they never gave us proper access”.

Just nine vaccine doses have been administered per 100 people in Africa, according to an AFP calculation.

That figure stands at 118 doses per 100 people in the United States and Canada; 104 in Europe; 85 in Asia; 84 in Latin America and the Caribbean; 69 in Oceania and 54 in the Middle East.

African nations “have been left behind by the rest of the world”, said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

The UN health agency chief spelled out the danger of leaving Africa so poorly covered by vaccines.

“This doesn’t only hurt the people of Africa, it hurts all of us,” he said.

“The longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue, and the higher the chances that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective.”

– ‘Miracle’ –

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told the press conference that just under 3.5 percent of the eligible African population has been fully vaccinated.

The WHO wants 40 percent fully immunised in every country by the end of the year and 70 percent of the world’s population by mid-2022.

It has called for countries to hold off administering extra booster shots until the end of December to allow more people to get a first dose instead.

The AU has set up the African COVID-19 Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, or AVAT, to purchase jabs for member states in a scheme to run alongside the donor-funded global Covax facility.

Masiyiwa said Africa was also setting up its own manufacturing capabilities and called for a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights on the vaccines, as a common good.

He said: “It was a great miracle to have these vaccines. Now let this miracle be available to all mankind.”

Source: AFP

14, September 2021

Southern Cameroons Situation Report: 9 soldiers, 4 separatist fighters killed ⁰

At least nine soldiers and four separatist fighters were killed in weekend clashes in Southern Cameroons that has been ravaged by a four-year armed separatist conflict, security and local sources said on Monday.

Seven soldiers were killed and four others seriously injured on Sunday when separatist fighters detonated a roadside improvised explosive device in Kikaikilaki, a locality in the region, an army official who asked not to be named revealed.

The soldiers were transporting corpses of two other soldiers who were ambushed and killed on Saturday while they were patrolling the Chounghi village in the region, the official said.

Early Monday, the army displayed corpses of four armed separatist fighters on the street of Bamenda, chief town of the region whom they said were killed in overnight clashes in the town. A civilian was also killed in the clashes, according to the army. There were no reports of casualties on the part of government forces.

There have been renewed clashes in the region over the past one week after separatist fighters threatened to disrupt schools, according to security reports.

Since 2017, government forces have been clashing with separatist fighters in the Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest of the Central African nation where separatists want to create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

Source: Xinhuanet

14, September 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: No Lockdown from September 15 ⁰

INTERIM GOVERNMENT STATEMENT:

THERE IS NO LOCKDOWN FROM 15 SEPTEMBER 2021

Fellow Ambazonians,

Over the last 24 hours, the Interim Government of Ambazonia has been inundated with calls and questions from concerned citizens in Ground Zero and the Diaspora regarding a so-called “Gutteres Lockdown” of Ambazonia starting Wednesday 15 September 2021 to Saturday 02 October 2021. After extensive consultation with Generals and Commanders in Ground Zero, and other trustworthy frontline movements of our struggle, your Interim Government now states that it made NO such decision and declaration. Consequently, there is NO LOCKDOWN of Ambazonia, and any such notice should be disregarded forthwith.

Monday Lockdowns remain in place for the foreseeable future.

As a government, the safety and security of our people in Ground Zero is our utmost priority, and your Interim Government would always consult with our self-defence heroes before making public pronouncements that affect the lives of our people in Ground Zero. Daily business and community activities within the territory of Ambazonia must proceed with vigilance and without interruption.

Truth has always triumphed over deception, and integrity must remain our companion in this journey for freedom. Despite the sufferings that the regime in Yaoundé is inflicting upon our people, it is unfortunate that some Southern Cameroonians have decided to join them in their duplicity. Still, despite this, I am calling on the people of Ambazonia to remain hopeful.

We want to use this opportunity to advise our people to go about their daily business but remain vigilant as some major military actions are planned over the coming weeks.

Fellow Ambazonians, this is a difficult journey we have embarked on. No one can say with utmost certainty what the outcome will be, but we must remain focus and keep our eyes on the prize despite the hard work of detractors. We shall not accept anything less than total independence.

Thank You, God Bless Ambazonia. May God bless you all.

Dabney Yerima