Life

11, November 2020

US Supreme Court leans towards preserving Obamacare ⁰

A more conservative Supreme Court appears unwilling to do what Republicans have long desired: kill off the Affordable Care Act, including its key protections for pre-existing health conditions and subsidized insurance premiums that affect tens of millions of Americans.

Meeting remotely a week after the election and in the midst of a pandemic that has closed their majestic courtroom, the justices on Tuesday took on the latest Republican challenge to the Obama-era health care law, with three appointees of President Donald Trump, an avowed foe of the law, among them.

But at least one of those Trump appointees, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, seemed likely to vote to leave the bulk of the law intact, even if he were to find the law’s now-toothless mandate that everyone obtain health insurance to be unconstitutional.

“It does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the act in place,” Kavanaugh said.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote two earlier opinions preserving the law, stated similar views, and the court’s three liberal justices are almost certain to vote to uphold the law in its entirety. That presumably would form a majority by joining a decision to cut away only the mandate, which now has no financial penalty attached to it. Congress zeroed out the penalty in 2017, but left the rest of the law untouched.

Source: AFP

9, November 2020

US President-elect Joe Biden says coronavirus vaccine news gives ‘hope,’ but long battle ahead ⁰

US President-elect Joe Biden Monday hailed as a cause for “hope” the news that a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was 90 percent effective — but warned of a long battle still ahead.

“I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough and to give us such cause for hope,” Biden said in a statement, adding that he received advance notice of the announcement on Sunday night.

“At the same time, it is also important to understand that the end of the battle against COVID-19 is still months away,” he added — stressing the continued importance of mask-wearing for the foreseeable future.

He spoke as European stock markets and oil prices jumped on the vaccine announcement.

Pfizer and BioNTech said that according to preliminary findings, protection in patients was achieved seven days after the second of two doses, and 28 days after the first.

The companies said they expect to supply up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020, and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

US President Donald Trump also hailed the news, calling it “great” on Twitter.

Soaring coronavirus cases across the world have forced many millions of people back into lockdown, causing further damage to ravaged economies.

In the US cases have been surging across the country in recent weeks. Trump’s defeat to Biden last week was blamed in part on his administration’s response to the pandemic.

Also on Monday Biden named the scientists who will lead his administration’s pandemic response, signaling his plans to prioritize Covid-19 from the outset.

The advisory board will be led by three co-chairs: epidemiologist and former Federal Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner David Kessler, former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, and Yale public health professor Marcella Nunez-Smith.

In addition, the board will have 10 members, ranging from immunologists and epidemiologists to biodefense experts and leading public health officials.

Among them is Rick Bright, the virologist who was ousted by the Trump administration in April from his post as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the agency charged with developing a vaccine.

A month later he warned Congress that Trump had no “master plan” to fight the pandemic.

Covid-19 has left more than 237,000 people dead in the US, the worst death toll globally.

According to a Johns Hopkins University tracker, the number of new US cases has topped 100,000 every 24 hours for several days running, and is nearing 10 million in total — despite Trump’s claim the world’s biggest economy is “rounding the corner”.

Biden said the board will help shape his approach on the surge in cases across the country as well as ensuring a safe vaccine is distributed efficiently, creating a blueprint he will begin implementing on day one of his presidency.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will receive a joint virus briefing Monday in Wilmington, Delaware from their advisory team.

Biden will then deliver remarks on coronavirus and economic recovery.

Source: AFP

9, November 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Bamenda teacher killed by stray bullet ⁰

Amah Franco Anchebe, a physics and mathematics teacher at GSS Bawum in Bafut was killed by a stray bullet in his house in Alabukam in Bamenda.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that the bullet came from an altercation between Ambazonia Restoration Forces and soldiers loyal to the regime in Yaoundé in the Mankon district not far from the road to the Bamenda airport.

The French Cameroun governor Adolphe Lele Afrique reportedly summoned a meeting grouping the so-called security heads and reassured the population about the security situation in the Northern Zone of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Southern Cameroons have seen an escalation of insecurity in recent days. Cardinal Christian Tumi was kidnapped and then released by armed men. The traditional ruler of Liwu Lawale in Buea was recently assassinated. And the most appalling is the massacre of 7 children during an attack on a school in Kumba in the Meme County by armed men working for Minister Paul Atanga Nji.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

7, November 2020

UNICEF alarmed by spike in school attacks in Southern Cameroons ⁰

There has been an alarming spike in attacks on schools and education centers in the North- and South-West of Cameroon, UNICEF said today.

Since the resumption of the school year less than a month ago, there have been multiple reports of kidnappings, harassment and killings affecting students and teachers.

At least 6 students and 11 teachers were kidnapped, school premises were set ablaze and an unknown number of students and education staff were humiliated and harassed in various schools in Kumbo (Bui division), Fundong (Boyo division) and Limbe (Fako division).

These latest reports follow news that in Kumba, in the southwestern region, 9 students were killed, some as young as 9 years, and several others were injured in an attack on a school on 24 October.

“These attacks are unacceptable,” said Marie-Pierre Poirier, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa. “Schools are places of learning where children should feel safe and protected. We call on all parties to protect all children, at school or in their communities and to uphold the principles of the Safe Schools Declaration, which calls for stopping attacks on schools, education facilities and personnel.”

There were 35 attacks on schools in the unstable regions of Cameroon in 2019, according to UNICEF-verified data. This compares to 17 attacks so far this year, a decrease that might be attributed to COVID-related school closures between March and June.

“More than 1.1 million children are out of school in Cameroon. This number is expected to rise as parents and communities fear sending their children to school lest they are attacked on their way to or while they are at school. The children of Cameroon deserve better. Every missed opportunity for learning today, will prevent children from realizing their full potential and to become active and productive citizens of the future,” Poirier said.

4, November 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Gunmen attack Kulu Memorial College in Limbe ⁰

Armed men, believed to be Amba fighters, today (November 4, 2020) attacked Kulu Memorial College in the Mile Four district in Limbe.

Two classrooms were set on fire while valuables worth thousands of dollars were destroyed. Cameroon Concord News leant that the attackers stormed the school, and then directed all students and teachers to strip naked and struck them with their sticks.

A police source in Limbe has been quoted as saying that the assailants also shot and destroyed the windscreen of cars parked opposite the school premise. One fired at the window of the principal’s office and destroyed a television set.

No Ambazonia group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

By Kinsley Betek

1, November 2020

Schools at the heart of Cameroon’s separatist conflict ⁰

Schools are “weapons of war” in a separatist insurgency in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions, but the massacre of eight young children in class last week brought a new level of horror.

Since violence erupted in 2017, the kidnapping of youngsters, attacks on teachers and the destruction of schools have been frequent in the western part of the mainly French-speaking country.

Secessionist groups kill civilians, while the army is also known for brutal attacks on non-combattants in its drive to crush forces seeking a breakaway state.

On October 24, gunmen on motorbikes rode up to a bilingual school in the town of Kumba and opened fire on girls and boys aged between 12 and 14.

At least eight children perished and about a dozen more were wounded and taken to hospital, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The school is used as a weapon of war in this conflict,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, regional Central Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told AFP.

“The separatists don’t want the children to be in the schools, institutions which they equate with central authority,” she said.

“Most of the teachers appointed to the Anglophone regions are Francophone,” Allegrozzi added, in a country where French is used by a majority. The English-speaking regions are a post-colonial heritage.

Syllabuses for history and civic education lessons are seen as biased instruments of government policy by separatists, who have in recent years introduced a strategy of school boycotts.

In November 2019, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that some 855,000 children were not attending school in the Anglophone regions.

About 90 percent of state-run primary schools, totalling more than 4,100 establishments, and 77 percent of the state-run secondary schools were not functioning or completely closed down, UNICEF found.

‘People began to believe again’

The start of the new school year on October 5, 2020, was markedly different.

“The government and Anglophone civil society put a lot of pressure on the separatist groups to let their children go back to school, and schools that had been closed for years began to reopen,” said Arrey Elvis Ntui, the senior researcher in Cameroon for the independent International Crisis Group.

“After three years of almost total school shortages, people began to believe again in the institution, the classrooms were packed,” said Jacques Ebwea, a political analyst based in Buea, the chief town of the Anglophone Southwest region.

“It was a success. Unfortunately, Saturday’s attack will dampen the enthusiasm of many people,” he added.

Blaming separatists for the killings, Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi declared that “the goal of the secessionists is to break the momentum observed in the resumption of classes for the 2020/2021 school year in the Northwest and Southwest regions, and thereby dissuade parents from sending their children to school.”

On Tuesday morning, false rumours of new attacks spread panic at schools in Limbe and Buea in the Southwest, where frightened pupils tried to flee the premises while their scared parents were rushing to fetch them.

“I don’t know if I’m going to send my child back to school,” said Desire, a resident of Kumba. “If the situation deteriorates any further, I will send him elsewhere, to Douala or Bafoussam.”

Both towns are on Francophone territory and Douala, a big city and port, is the economic capital of the country.

‘Could happen anywhere’

“There is general panic in the area,” said Semma Valentine, a teacher in Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest region. “All parties concerned in the conflict are to blame for this situation.”

“Parents must have the courage to send their children to school, but we also need the government to guarantee the safety of these establishments.”

Stephen Afuh, chairman of the Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union (PEATTU), warned that “what happened in Kumba could happen anywhere at any time.”

He remarked on the difference between urban areas and the rural ones where many schools could not reopen.

“To ensure security in schools, the government should call a ceasefire, recognise its mistakes and open a dialogue between all parties to examine the causes of the conflict and to find solutions together,” Afuh said.

Confronted with Saturday’s attack, a “deeply outraged” government chastised the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba for reopening without authorisation, which meant that it “could not benefit from the same protective measures as other places of learning”.

In Cameroon, nevertheless, it is common practice for schools to open without the required authorisation.

“Keep the schools open, make sure they have the authorisations to function,” Secondary Education Minister Pauline Nalova Lyonga said in English during a visit to the site.

“The school that works will guarantee our joint existence.”

Source: AFP

1, November 2020

Child malnutrition hits highest levels in war-ravaged Southern Cameroons ⁰

The Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima has called the attention of the international community to the plight of innocent Southern Cameroons children and warned of the highest level of malnutrition among kids in the rural areas of the territory that has been totally and completely destroyed by invading French Cameroun army soldiers.

Vice President Yerima said on Saturday that more than a quarter of a million Ambazonian children under four are suffering malnutrition in both the Northern and Southern zones of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Yerima furthered during Saturday’s war cabinet briefing that Southern Cameroons children have been abandoned by the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and the UN children’s fund UNICEF and are facing a high risk of dying unless they receive urgent treatment.

The Southern Cameroons leader also noted that acute malnutrition among Ambazonia children is hitting the highest levels the Interim Government has seen since French Cameroun president Paul Biya declared war against the people of Southern Cameroons.

Ever since the French Cameroun genocidal campaign started in British Southern Cameroons, the UN and the African Union have been issuing empty statements and have turned a blind eye while Southern Cameroons is on the brink of a catastrophic food security crisis.

“If the Southern Cameroons diaspora fails to finance the Amba resistance, we are nearing an irreversible situation and risk losing an entire generation of Southern Cameroons’s young children,” the Ambazonia Vice President warned.

Cameroon’s unwinnable war

Southern Cameroons is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis after the regime in Yaoundé launched a war against the English speaking community four years ago.

The ongoing war was meant to subdue a popular uprising that had declared the independence of the people of Southern Cameroons. While the French Cameroun war has failed to achieve that objective, its military and civil administrators have been continuing often blind operations that kill and maim civilians, including children.

The recent killing of 8 children in Kumba, the chief town in the Meme County revealed to the world that Southern Cameroons children are among the most vulnerable victims of the war, but the issue has barely drawn any international response.

At the heart of the crisis, which started in 2016, was a strike by teachers and lawyers, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The professionals, supported by citizens of their areas, protested the unfair use of the French language and unjustified appointments of French speakers in their territories. Cameroon is a bilingual country. By 2017, the situation had spiralled out of control and developed into a fully-fledged separatist war. Both government forces and separatists are now bogged down in a conflict, that observers say, can only be resolved through dialogue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

22, October 2020

Spain becomes first EU nation to reach 1 million Covid-19 cases ⁰

Spain has become the first European Union nation to surpass a million coronavirus infections, official data showed Wednesday. The Mediterranean country doubled its tally in just six weeks despite the government’s fresh restrictions on public life to curb the spread of the disease.

The country recorded 16,973 confirmed cases of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, the health ministry announced Wednesday, taking the total to 1,005,295 since its first case was diagnosed on January 31 on the remote island of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands.

Of this number, 34,366 people have died, after 156 more deaths were recorded in the previous 24 hours.

After slowing to a trickle in the wake of Spain’s strict March to June lockdown, the infection rate accelerated to frequently exceed 10,000 cases a day from late August, and hit a new peak of more than 16,000 last week.

Hurried lockdown exit

A hurried exit from confinement before tracing systems were in place let transmission get out of hand faster than in other countries, said Dr. Rafael Bengoa, co-founder of Bilbao’s Institute for Health and Strategy.

Spain, which is home to around 47 million people, is only the sixth country in the world to cross this grim milestone after the United States, India, Brazil, Russia and Argentina, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The new wave of contagion has been less deadly than in late March and April and the height of the health crisis, when fatalities routinely exceeded 800 per day, as the median age of new infections has dropped.

But with healthcare workers warning the spike could once again overwhelm hospitals, health minister Salvador Illa said Tuesday the government is considering several new measures, including night-time curfews such as those recently put in place in France and Belgium.

“We are facing very tough weeks ahead, winter is coming, the second wave is no longer a threat, it is a reality across Europe,” he told a news conference, adding the government was “open to everything” to contain the virus.

‘Political weapon’

The health ministry is set to meet Thursday with representatives from Spain’s powerful regional governments, who are in charge of healthcare, to update the country’s plan to respond to the pandemic.

Spain was one of the worst-affected countries when the coronavirus struck Europe early this year before one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns helped reduce the outbreak’s spread.

But infections have surged since the lockdown measures were fully removed at the end of June, with the rise blamed on the rapid return of nightlife and a lack of an efficient system to track and trace infections.

Messy disagreements between the central and regional governments, and between political parties, have also hampered the response, experts say. “The pandemic has been used as a political weapon to fight and argue with your adversaries instead of trying to find a middle ground and the best solution for everyone,” Salvador Macip, an expert in health sciences at Catalonia’s Open University who has written a book called “The Great Modern Plagues”, told AFP.

Fresh restrictions in Madrid, Catalonia, La Rioja and Navarre

As infections have picked up, Spanish regional authorities started imposing fresh restrictions.

While daily deaths have been hovering around 100 – a far cry from the peak of nearly 900 registered in late March – nationwide hospital admissions have jumped 20 percent in two weeks and 70 percent in the north-eastern region of Catalonia. That may potentially force some Barcelona hospitals to suspend non-urgent procedures

Madrid and several satellite cities have since early October been under a partial lockdown, while Catalonia has imposed a 15-day shutdown of all bars and restaurants.

The tiny wine-producing region of La Rioja joined nearby Navarre in announcing a blanket ban for all non-essential travel to and from the area.

Angela Hernandez Puente, a doctor and the deputy secretary of Madrid’s Amtys medical association, said the situation was very worrying, but not comparable with the overwhelming pressure the health system came under in March when intensive care units were full and staff lacked personal protective equipment.

‘Tired and angry health staff’

But she said the gains of Spain’s tough lockdown were wasted due a lack of preparation for a second wave of infections, citing as an example the failure to hire more doctors for public primary care centres, the first line of defence against the virus as they handle testing and tracing potential cases as well as treating the sick.

“It’s as if they thought that since infections lowered over the summer, ‘That’s it, it’s over’, when in fact it was the moment to prepare,” Hernandez Puente told AFP.

“Health care staff are tired and angry, many doctors feel that more should have been done in June, July and August to not let the public health system become overburdened as it is now,” she added.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP & REUTERS)

19, October 2020

French Cameroun Crisis: Schools close in the North as Boko Haram steps up attacks ⁰

Cameroon says it has again closed more than 60 schools on its northern border with Nigeria to protect children and teaching staff from increasing Boko Haram attacks. Many people have fled the region and are now displaced.

The Islamist group has stepped up its use of suicide bombers, even as the country’s military has drastically reduced the jihadists’ firepower.

The central African country has deployed its military to assure the safety of the remaining civilian population in the affected regions.

Ousmanou Garga, Cameroon’s basic education official on the northern border with Nigeria, says recent Boko Haram attacks have made many schools unsafe.

Garga says several dozen schools in Cameroon’s Mayo Sava, Mayo Tsanaga and Logone and Chari administrative units that border Nigeria’s Borno state, the epicenter of Boko Haram’s activities, no longer function.

“Sixty-two schools have been closed. The children have to be either scholarized (educated) in other schools very far from their own villages or to abandon schools. Thirty-four-thousand-and-fifty-four students have been registered as IDPs. We have the students of the host communities; we have even refugee students,” he said.

Garga said teachers in all the affected schools fled with the children they teach.

Cameroon’s military has been reporting at least three Boko Haram attacks every week since January. The military says most of the attackers are suicide bombers, mainly women and children. The military says the terrorist group has torched 13 schools within the past two months, held at least 200 people for ransom and abducted an unknown number of civilians.

Colonel Ndikum Azeh, commander of Cameroonian troops fighting Boko Haram in the Mayo Sava, Mayo Tsanaga and Logone and Chari administrative units, says the military has been deployed to protect civilians in the area. Azeh says some troops have also been deployed to teach displaced students in safer areas less susceptible to Boko Haram attacks.

“Ashigashia (a border town) has for long been a target for Boko Haram assault as early as 2014. The hierarchy (military) thinks that to sustain a good security situation, it is through the youths and the best process is through their education,” Azeh said.

Nongovernmental organizations, rights and humanitarian groups have been calling on Boko Haram to respect the intergovernmental Safe School Declaration. Desire Fouda of the NGO School First says the declaration should be observed to protect students and ensure they are able to receive an education.

“We sensitize different actors in education to respect those guidelines on safe schools declaration so that all the different actors should contribute to help those children to have access to education,” Fouda said.

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting for 11 years to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The fighting has spread to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin, with regular killings, abductions and burnings of mosques, churches, markets and schools.

Source: VOA

18, October 2020

Covid-19 Crisis: Universities in Cameroon reopen after months of suspension ⁰

Universities and other higher education institutions in Cameroon started to welcome returning students on Thursday after a suspension of nearly seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The universities have adopted strict social distancing and all-round disinfections while receiving the returning students, officials said.

All students and teachers must wear face masks and check their temperature regularly, said Minister of Higher Education Jacques Fame Ndongo.

Some returning students told Xinhua that their emotional connection to their universities has become even deeper despite a long separation. “I feel like crying. Setting foot on campus after such a long time gives me deep satisfaction.

It was like I was in prison and now free. I’m so happy to start school again,” Gerard Batir, a sophomore of the University of Douala, told Xinhua.

Cameroon has so far recorded more than 20,000 coronavirus cases. COVID-19 prevalence in the country is generally decreasing with a recovery rate of 95 percent, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

Source: Xinhuanet