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Biya Francophone regime more loyal to France than to its own people: Vice President Yerima

15, September 2020

Biya Francophone regime more loyal to France than to its own people: Vice President Yerima 0

The French Cameroun regime has more loyalty to France than it has to its own French speaking Camerounian people, according to the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government.

Dabney Yerima made the comment in a conversation with the Cameroon Concord News Group on Monday.

“French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks that he pressured La Republique du Cameroun leader Paul Biya to release Prof Maurice Kamto was a clear indication that France still has a colonial attitude towards French Cameroun” according to Vice President Yerima.

On Feb. 22, a video went viral on social media showing the French president telling a Cameroonian activist in Paris that he had pressured Biya to release opposition leader, Maurice Kamto from jail.

“It’s pretty clear that there is a genocide going on in Southern Cameroons and Biya is behind the torture and brutal murder of thousands of Southern Cameroonians but Paris has erected a stone wall against any international effort geared towards ending the war in Ambazonia” Yerima added.

“The President Macron’s meeting with the French Cameroun activist in Paris was an acceptance that the French government is interfering in French Cameroun internal affairs” the Ambazonian leader concluded.

By Isong Asu

Europe to see rise in coronavirus fatalities in October, November, WHO warns

15, September 2020

Europe to see rise in coronavirus fatalities in October, November, WHO warns 0

The World Health Organization expects Europe to see a rise in the daily number of Covid-19 deaths in October and November, the head of the body’s European branch told AFP on Monday.

“It’s going to get tougher. In October, November, we are going to see more mortality,” WHO Europe director Hans Kluge said, as the continent currently experiences a surge of cases though the number of deaths has remained relatively stable.

The resurgence is however expected to lead to an increase in daily deaths, the WHO said.

“It’s a moment where countries don’t want to hear this bad news, and I understand,” Kluge told AFP in an interview, stressing that he wanted to send the “positive message” that the pandemic “is going to finish, at one moment or another.”

The WHO Europe’s 55 member states are holding an online meeting on Monday and Tuesday to discuss their response to the new coronavirus and agree on their overall five-year strategy.

However Kluge, based in Copenhagen, raised a warning finger to those who believe that the development of a vaccine will bring an end to the pandemic.

“I hear the whole time: ‘the vaccine is going to be the end of the pandemic’. Of course not!,” the Belgian said.

“We don’t even know if the vaccine is going to help all population groups. We are getting some signs now that it will help for one group and not for the other,” he said.

“And then if we have to order different vaccines, what a logistical nightmare!”

“The end of the pandemic is the moment that we as a community are going to learn how to live with this pandemic. And it depends on us and that’s a very positive message,” he said.

The number of cases in Europe has risen sharply in recent weeks, especially in Spain and France. On Friday alone, more than 51,000 new cases were reported in the 55 countries of the WHO Europe, which is more than the highest peak in April, according to the organisation.

Meanwhile, the number of daily deaths has remained at around the same level since early June, with around 400-500 deaths per day linked to Covid-19, WHO data showed.

Source: AFP

US: Biden brands Trump a ‘climate arsonist’ over wildfires

15, September 2020

US: Biden brands Trump a ‘climate arsonist’ over wildfires 0

Joe Biden branded President Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” on Monday for refusing to acknowledge global warming’s role in deadly wildfires sweeping the western United States, while Trump blamed lax forestry and declared, “I don’t think science knows.”

Dozens of conflagrations have raged with unprecedented scope across some 4.5 million acres (1.8 million hectares) in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, laying waste to several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 36 people.

The fires also have filled the region’s air with harmful levels of smoke and soot, bathing skies in eerie tones of orange and sepia while adding to a public health crisis already posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Ten deaths have been confirmed during the past week in Oregon, the latest flashpoint in a larger summer outbreak of fires accompanied by catastrophic lightning storms, record-breaking heat waves and bouts of extreme winds.

Those incendiary conditions gave way over the weekend to cooler, moister weather and calmer winds, enabling weary firefighters to gain ground in efforts to outflank blazes that had burned largely unchecked last week.

Fire managers cautioned that the battle was hardly over. Thunderstorms forecast for later in the week could bring much-needed rain but also more lightning. Officials also braced for a rise in the death toll.

As disaster teams scoured the ruins of dwellings engulfed by flames amid chaotic evacuations last week, Oregon’s emergency management authorities said they had yet to account for 22 people reported missing in the fires.

At least 25 people have perished in California wildfires since mid-August, and one fatality has been confirmed in Washington state. More than 6,200 homes and other structures have been lost, according to figures from all three states.

Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee slammed by Republicans for not visiting disaster areas, spoke from his home state of Delaware on the threat of increasingly frequent weather extremes that scientists have pointed to as evidence that climate change is supercharging the fires.

Trump, who trails Biden in national polls ahead of the Nov. 3 election, met with firefighters and officials in California after Democrats blasted the Republican president for remaining mostly silent on the wildfires.

“I think this is more of a management situation,” Trump answered, when asked by a reporter if climate change was a factor behind the fires. Without mentioning large wildfires that have raged elsewhere around the world in recent years – from southern Europe to Australia and Siberia – Trump asserted that other countries “don’t have this problem.”

“They have more explosive trees, meaning they catch fire much easier,” he said. “But they don’t have problems like this.”

The president and his administration have long sought to pin the blame for large wildfires on state officials, saying fuel-choked forests and scrub need to be thinned, more firebreaks should be cut and flammable debris cleared from forest floors.

Trump said improved forest management was something that could be tackled quickly, whereas climate change would take more time and require international cooperation that he said was lacking.

“When you get into climate change, well is India going to change its ways? And is China going to change its ways? And Russia? Is Russia going to change its ways?” he said after landing in McLellan Park, California.

‘I don’t think science knows’

Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax,” and in 2017 pulled the United States out of the Paris accords laying out an international approach to global warming. Biden, the former vice president, has included climate change on his list of major crises facing the United States.

Calling Trump a “climate arsonist,” Biden said: “If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned by wildfires? How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out?”

California Governor Gavin Newsom acknowledged more needs to be done to better manage forests to reduce fire risks, citing more than a century of aggressive fire suppression has allowed fuels to build up.

But he countered that global warming was nevertheless a driving factor in newly extreme wildfire behavior, and he reminded Trump that 57% of forest land in California is under federal ownership.

“We come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident: that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this,” the Democratic governor said during a meeting with the president.

Trump, who has authorized federal disaster aid for both California and Oregon, questioned that science.

“It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch,” he said. “I don’t think science knows.”

Tens of thousands of displaced residents across the Pacific Northwest continued to adjust to life as evacuees. Around the devastated southwestern Oregon towns of Phoenix and Talent, some people set up food stations in parking lots. Others defied evacuation orders to guard their own homes from looters.

Reinforcing local law enforcement resources strained by the disaster, Oregon is deploying as many as 1,000 National Guard troops to fire-stricken communities.

Two men were arrested in Oregon, one on Friday and another on Monday, on arson charges stemming from a handful of relatively small fires.

But police have cautioned against fake social media reports blaming wildfires on left-wing anti-fascists or right-wing Proud Boy activists.

Source: REUTERS

Japan’s Yoshihide Suga wins leadership race to succeed outgoing PM Shinzo Abe

14, September 2020

Japan’s Yoshihide Suga wins leadership race to succeed outgoing PM Shinzo Abe 0

Japan’s ruling party on Monday elected chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga as its new leader, making him all but certain to replace Shinzo Abe as the country’s next prime minister.

Suga easily won the ballot, taking 377 of a total of 534 valid votes from Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers and regional representatives.

His rivals, former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba and LDP policy chief Fumio Kishida, trailed far behind.

Given the LDP’s legislative majority, Suga is expected to handily win a parliamentary vote Wednesday and become prime minister, taking over from Abe, who is resigning for health reasons.

A powerful government adviser and spokesman, 71-year-old Suga is seen as promising stability and a continuation of Abe’s policies.

He has specifically said his candidacy was motivated by a desire to continue the outgoing prime minister’s programmes.

Ishiba, who is popular with the Japanese public but less so within his own party, won just 68 votes, with Kishida, who was once considered Abe’s favoured successor, taking 89.

Abe, who smashed records as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister before being forced to resign after a recurrence of ulcerative colitis, declined to publicly endorse any candidate.

The son of a strawberry farmer, Suga was raised in Japan’s northern Akita region, and the issues of rural areas suffering depopulation are said to be among his top concerns.

But not much is known about his personal ideology, and he is generally viewed as an adherent of neither the LDP’s most hawkish nor its more reformist wings.

As prime minister, he will face a series of tough challenges, including containing the coronavirus and righting the world’s third-biggest economy, which was in recession even before the pandemic.

(AFP)

French Cameroun: Six killed in suicide attack in Far North region

14, September 2020

French Cameroun: Six killed in suicide attack in Far North region 0

At least six civilians have been killed and 10 others injured in a suicide attack in Zeleved, a locality in Cameroon’s Far North region, according to several security sources.

Local officials interviewed by Xinhua confirmed the attack and said the traditional ruler and his wife were among those killed in the attack that occurred late Friday.

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to local journalist Dairou Mohammed.

“The suicide bomber was among those killed. He detonated the bomb just in front of the traditional ruler and his family and friends. Luckily some survived,” Mohammed told Xinhua.

On Wednesday, officials said a grenade blast in the Far North region injured seven civilians.

Source: Xinhunet

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Gov Ayade of Cross River State supports 46, 000 Ambazonian refugees

14, September 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Gov Ayade of Cross River State supports 46, 000 Ambazonian refugees 0

It’s been a long walk of pain anguish and even loss of loved ones as thousands fled from Southern Cameroon to seek asylum in Cross River state Nigeria for three years; following the Amazonian war in Southern Cameroon. These Cameroonians who were mostly women and children seeked shelter in various settlements in villages and were later relocated to refugee camps. 

Governor Ben Ayade who received the Cameroonian Government delegation last month ensued for peace and proper resettlement of these refugees back in their land of birth. “In all we do as Government we must make humanity our focus”.

The Cameroonian Government which is expected back to the State soon, have praised Governor Ben Ayade and the good people of Cross River State for their immeasurable support to the refugees, the Government provided land for settlement, water and sanitation facilities, livelihood, security etc. Outstanding is the support from the health sector that have provided health care services through the Primary Health Centers and General Hospitals at various locations.

 From time to time various health services have been provided at the refugees camp and settlements this includes Health sensitization, maternal and child health services, immunization, nutritional supplementation, renovation/equipping of facilities to serve the refugees and now COVID-19 sensitization and donation of COVID-19 items amongst others which was done by the Honorable Commissioner for Health Dr Betta Edu and her health team.

The Commissioner for Health with the COVID-19 taskforce paid a visit to the camp last week for COVID-19 sensitization, health talk, distribution of face masks hand sanitizers and other palliatives to the camp members at Ogoja. The compassionate Commissioner who spent quality time with families prayed that the refugees will return home soon with proper resettlement from their Government as the condition of living in the camps and settlements was not the best for children who for many have been out of school with poor access to social amenities while they are basically confined in camps and settlements with their parents or Guardians.

 “We have sensitized them in groups and settlements on COVID-19 signs and symptoms which they must look out for, as well as linkages for reporting such cases if seen. While the remain within our Borders we must continue to protect them as an outbreak of any disease including COVID-19 will affect not just the refugees but the host communities and may lead to loss of lives. I commend Governor Ben Ayade for his sustained support to the refugees over the years working through various MDAs Dr Betta Edu who is also the Chairman of the CRS COVID-19 taskforce added.

Source:  Vanguard

Yaoundé says patients at risk as COVID scares away blood donors

14, September 2020

Yaoundé says patients at risk as COVID scares away blood donors 0

Cameroon says it urgently needs more than 2,000 pints of blood to save the lives of about 300 people, including hemodialysis patients, in the central African state’s troubled English-speaking town of Bamenda.

Health workers say the fear of COVID-19, coupled with increasing attacks by separatist fighters, has scared away most blood donors. People wounded in the separatist crisis and dialysis patients are being rushed to hospitals in French-speaking towns.

Ngum Sirri, 55, was being rushed to the General Hospital in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, in the hospital’s ambulance. The hemodialysis patient was brought in from the English-speaking town of Bamenda by her family members. She says she is in search of blood to save her life.

“When you give blood you save lives, so we are pleading with the population to help us donate blood in the general hospital. There are vulnerable people in the hospital who need blood, like those with dialysis, those with sickle cells. We have blood shortage in the hospital,” she said.

Sirri is one of the 30 patients from the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda who have received emergency assistance at the General Hospital within the past six days.  

 Fidelis Ako, head of the blood transfusion unit of the Regional Hospital in Bamenda, confirmed that patients are leaving for French-speaking towns. He said blood banks are becoming empty in English-speaking towns. He said the separatist conflict led many blood donors to escape to safer localities and blood scarcity has now become acute with COVID-19 scare.

    “The socio-political crisis (separatist conflict) has scared many of our donors away and then now the COVID-19. Since the hospital is a [COVID-19] treatment center, many people think that when you come here you will have coronavirus, and so we could not have persons coming to the hospital to donate blood and as well we could not organize mobile voluntary blood donation campaigns. People should not be afraid of coming to the hospital to make their blood donations because coronavirus is not injectable,” he said.

Ako says the blood bank of the Bameda hospital has not been able to help 40 patients in need within seven days.

“Last week we received over 70 requests for blood units, but we have been able to transfuse just 31 units of blood. Before the crisis we were transfusing over 4,000 units of blood per year, but as of now, we have not been able to transfuse up to 2,000 units so it shows that we are going to lose more patients because we don’t have blood units at the blood bank,” Ako said.

Cameroon said several patients have died as a result of the blood shortage and that its hospitals are finding it difficult to treat civilians wounded in the separatist conflict. Many of the injured are moved to hospitals in French-speaking towns like Bafoussam, Douala and Yaoundé.

 Ako said health authorities last week announced incentives to encourage blood donation. Civilians who donate blood will have a 50% reduction in their medical bills when they become sick.

 Non-governmental organizations have been encouraging people to donate blood. Feka Parchibel of the NGO Hope for Vulnerables and Orphans says many children they help also need blood.

“Our people are in dire need of blood. I am calling on all blood donors in the North West and the South West regions to help by rushing to the hospitals to donate blood to save lives. All we need is to practice all the preventive measures,” Parchibel said.

 Cameroon has reported more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases, with 415 deaths since March 5, when the first coronavirus case was reported in the central African state, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Source: VOA  

French Cameroun Ministers can no longer count on Camair-Co

14, September 2020

French Cameroun Ministers can no longer count on Camair-Co 0

Short of viable planes, Camair-Co is under some form of CPDM pressure after ministers’ road accident in the Far North Region of French Cameroun.

The three French Cameroun members of government were forced to travel by road for want of available Camair-Co aircraft and ended up in a river. The accident puts the national carrier’s management in a bind, reported Africa Intelligence.

Death toll in US wildfires expected to rise sharply

13, September 2020

Death toll in US wildfires expected to rise sharply 0

Search and rescue crews using dogs combed through neighborhoods left in blackened ruins by massive wildfires burning across three states on Saturday, and U.S. President Donald Trump said he would travel to California to see the devastation first-hand.

Flames have destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns in the latest outbreak of wildfires that have raged across the western United States this summer, scorching a landscape the size of New Jersey and killing at least 26 people since early August.

But after four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked earlier in the week.

At least six people have been killed this week in Oregon, according to the state’s wildfire tracking website. Governor Kate Brown has said that dozens of people remained missing across three counties.

In California, tens of thousands of firefighters were battling 28 major wildfires as of Saturday afternoon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.  Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over most of the blazes.

The White House said Trump, a Republican, will meet with California officials on Monday. The president has said that western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, accusing them of poor forest management.

Trump’s Democratic opponent in the November election, Joe Biden, on Saturday linked the conflagrations to climate change, echoing comments made a day earlier by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Thick smoke blankets three states

“The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes,” Newsom said in a briefing livestreamed from a charred mountainside near Oroville, California.

The Pacific Northwest has since Labor Day endured a string of fierce wildfires that have darkened the sky with thick smoke and ash, creating some of the world’s worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors.

The small mountain town of Paradise, California, nearly destroyed in 2018 by the deadliest wildfire in state history, posted the world’s worst air quality index reading at 592, according to the PurpleAir monitoring site, as two of the state’s largest blazes burned on either side of it.

More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks.

In southern Oregon, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99 south of Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent.

Molalla, a logging community 25 miles (40 km) south of downtown Portland, was an ash-covered ghost town after its more than 9,000 residents were told to evacuate, with only 30 refusing to leave, the city’s fire department said.

Molalla was on the front line of an evacuation zone stretching north to within 3 miles (4.8 km) of downtown Portland. The sheriff in suburban Clackamas County set a 10 p.m.  PDT (0500 on Saturday GMT) curfew to deter “possible increased criminal activity.”

In Portland, the Multnomah County Sheriff chastised residents who had set up their own checkpoints to stop cars after conspiracy theories spread on social media that members of Black Lives Matter or Antifa were lighting fires. Local officials have called those assertions groundless.

“We are removing false claims that the wildfires in Oregon were started by certain groups,” a Facebook spokesman said on Saturday. “This is based on confirmation from law enforcement that these rumors are forcing local fire and police agencies to divert resources from fighting the fires and protecting the public.”

Source: REUTERS

Southern Cameroons War: Biya has no sense of humanity

13, September 2020

Southern Cameroons War: Biya has no sense of humanity 0

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government has condemned French Cameroun’s current military campaign in Bamenda that has aggravated the sufferings of the people of Southern Cameroons and it is also obstructing access to medical supplies amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking during a meeting with members of the Ambazonia Intelligence Community late on Friday, Dabney Yerima slammed the Biya French Cameroun regime for its atrocities in Southern Cameroons saying the 87 year old butcher in Yaoundé has no sense of humanity.

The Southern Cameroons Vice President also lashed out at what he called “deliberate silence” on the part of the international community.

“We have heard prominent figures around the globe alluding to the genocide going on in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia but no one is willing to take action against the French Cameroun crime syndicate in Yaounde” Vice President Yerima said.

“The crimes presently being committed in Southern Cameroons by the French Cameroun military is unprecedented in African history” Dabney Yerima underlined.

More than 35,000 Southern Cameroonians have been killed ever since President Biya of French Cameroun declared war against the people of Ambazonia. But the UN has maintained the tally at 3,000.

By Chi Prudence Asong

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