Nigeria, South Africa and other African governments scrambled on Monday to help their nationals escape the Russian invasion in Ukraine as reports emerged of racist and unfair treatment of their citizens at border crossings.

African nationals, many of them students, are among hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee into Poland and other neighbours.

Nigeria on Monday urged border officials in Ukraine and elsewhere to treat its citizens equally.

“There have been unfortunate reports of Ukrainian police and security personnel refusing to allow Nigerians to board buses and trains heading towards the Ukraine-Poland border,” said presidential advisor Garba Shehu in a statement.

“In one video widely circulating on social media, a Nigerian mother with her young baby was filmed being physically forced to give up her seat to another person.”

He said there are also reports of Polish officials refusing Nigerian citizens entry into Poland from Ukraine.

“It is paramount that everyone is treated with dignity and without favour,” said Shehu.

A group of South Africans, mostly students, have been stuck at the Ukrainian-Polish border, the country’s foreign ministry spokesman, Clayson Monyela, said on Twitter.

The South African ambassador to Warsaw was at the site trying to get them through, according to Monyela who on Sunday had said Africans were being “treated badly” at the Polish-Ukraine border.

Poland’s ambassador to Nigeria Joanna Tarnawska dismissed claims of unfair treatment.

“Everybody receives equal treatment. I can assure you that I have reports that already some Nigerian nationals have crossed the border into Poland,” she told local media.

She said Nigerians could stay for 15 days. Even invalid documents were being accepted to cross the border and Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, she added.

The Ukrainian embassy in Nigeria could not immediately be reached for comments.

‘Kept outside’

Some Nigerians who made it across the borders described frightening journeys in the dark to reach traffic-packed frontiers where they were made to wait as officials gave priority to Ukrainian women and children.

Stephanie Agekameh, a medical student now in Poland, said officials at the Medyka border crossing were responding first to Ukrainians.

“One of the officers came and told us it’s harder for us foreigners because they have to get in touch with our government in different countries,” she said by text message.

Speaking from Korczowa in Poland, Nigerian managerial sciences student Agantem Moshe, said Ukrainian police had pushed Africans out of the way to make way for women and children.

“From the Polish side it was smooth, they were professionals. In Ukraine, they kept us outside in the cold,” he said.

The UN said that more than half a million refugees from Ukraine had so far crossed into neighbouring countries.

Nigeria’s embassies in Bucharest said it had received 130 Nigerians from Ukraine. Another 74 were accounted for in Budapest, where another 200 were expected on Monday, the foreign ministry said.

Another 52 had arrived in Warsaw with another 23 being processed.

“We assure Nigerians that all hands are on deck and arrangements are being put in place to effectively evacuate our citizens in safety and dignity,” Nigerian official Gabriel Aduda said in a statement.

Ghana’s government said it would meet with parents of students stuck in Ukraine on Tuesday and sent embassy officials to border points to help.

Ivory Coast, which according to state media has 500 nationals in Ukraine, said it was also making arrangements for their evacuation.

Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry said 201 citizens were in the country, most of them students.

It said last week all Kenyans were safe and accounted for but that some were stuck at the Polish border because of visa restrictions.

Nigerian accountant Lukmon Busari was relieved his son, a fourth-year medical student, was already out after waiting for a day on the Polish border.

“Initially they didn’t allow them to move as they gave priority to Ukrainians, to women and children. Eventually they allowed them into Poland,” Busari told AFP by telephone.

“According to him, the Polish authorities did a marvellous job. He left on Thursday and got to the border on Thursday night, and he got into Poland on Friday.”

His son was currently resting in Poland before coming home.

“We are seeing how we can clear a flight for him to come back to Nigeria.”

Source: AFP

Queen Elizabeth II has cancelled two engagements on Thursday after she tested positive for coronavirus at the weekend, Buckingham Palace said.

“The two virtual audiences that had previously been scheduled to take place today will now be rescheduled for a later date,” a spokesman said.

Royal officials announced on Sunday that the 95-year-old head of state had tested positive and had “mild” Covid symptoms, but would continue with “light duties”.

Her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, tested positive for the second time since early 2020 on February 10, two days after meeting his mother at Windsor Castle.

The Queen, who is in her record-breaking 70th year on the throne, cancelled similar virtual engagements planned for Tuesday but spoke to Prime Minister Boris Johnson Wednesday.

The monarch and the prime minister hold regular weekly meetings in private. They were conducted by telephone rather than in person due to coronavirus restrictions.

Palace officials said there were no further engagements planned for this week. The latest cancellation will inevitably stoke further fears for her health, given her advanced age.

As a precaution, the Queen and her husband Prince Philip moved to Windsor, west of London, in March 2020 as the global pandemic hit Britain.

The couple, who were married for 73 years, self-isolated with a reduced number of household staff. Philip, 99, died in April 2021, and his funeral was held under virus curbs.

Elizabeth returned to official duties after his death and as restrictions were lifted. But she was forced to slow down on medical advice in October last year.

The palace was forced to confirm that she had an overnight stay in hospital after going in for unspecified tests. Since then her appearances have become rarer.

She held a public engagement at her Sandringham residence in eastern England on February 5 on the eve of the anniversary of her accession to the throne in 1952.

Source: AFP

Come April, many Britons will have to choose between heating and eating. Everything from bus fares to mortgages are going to cost more. Interest rates have gone up twice in seven weeks and 3 more hikes are on the horizon, as the central bank tries to tackle the situation. Meanwhile members of parliament are livid, saying the government is incompetent.

This week millions learned that their gas and electricity bills are going to jump 54 percent. The government says there’s nothing it can do, with energy prices going up worldwide.

Also causing inflation to rise is supply chain issues, higher import taxes and wages increasing. Brexit, the pandemic and a global energy crisis a perfect storm for Britain now in the grips of its worst economic slump in 300 years. But who will pick up the bill?

On the first of April costs of living will go up around 3000 pounds a household. On the same day British politicians will get a 2,000-pound pay rise. So it’s clear, those on the top of the pile have their bills covered and it will be those already on the breadline that will pick up the bill.

Source: Presstv

In what was expected to be one of the last addresses by a Holocaust survivor to the German parliament, Inge Auerbacher appealed Thursday to keep alive the victims’ memory.

Fighting back tears as she recalled the suffering and loss she endured at the hands of the Nazis, Auerbacher told the Bundestag as it marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day that it was essential to fight the spreading “cancer” of hatred.

“I have lived in New York for 75 years and can still remember well this terrible time of terror and hate,” said Auerbacher, 87, who flew to Berlin in the face of the pandemic to take part in the ceremonies.

“Unfortunately this cancer has resurfaced and hatred of Jews is common in many countries of the world including Germany,” she said on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

“This sickness must be healed as soon as possible,” she said to applause from MPs, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his cabinet.

Auerbacher said she had been the last Jewish child born in her hometown of Kippenheim in 1934 before the Nazis’ genocidal campaign.

While her grandmother was deported to Riga and murdered, Auerbacher and her parents were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp when she was just seven years old.

She recounted the abuse and horrific conditions she and her family endured, but also her close friendship at the camp with a Jewish girl her age from Berlin, Ruth Nelly Abraham, who was later murdered at Auschwitz.

Auerbacher will on Friday visit the family’s home to place candles at small plaques in their memory.

The speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Mickey Levy, who was also in attendance embraced Auerbacher and wept openly as he recited a prayer for the dead.

“Keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive is a difficult task, a task placed on the shoulders of the every generation,” he said.

Germany has officially marked Holocaust Remembrance Day every January 27 since 1996 with commemorations across the country.

Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit noted that Germany would “soon have to go forward without the personal recollections of the last survivors”.

Of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, more than one million were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, most in its notorious gas chambers, along with tens of thousands of others including homosexuals, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher said she had been the last Jewish child born in her hometown of Kippenheim in 1934 before the Nazis’ genocidal campaign

This year’s anniversary is marked by growing concerns about extremist violence and incitement in Germany, particularly among militant opponents of government coronavirus restrictions.

The number of crimes committed by right-wing extremists jumped in 2020 to its highest level ever recorded in the post-war period, an over five-percent rise to 23,604.

Source: AFP

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday became a father again, after his wife, Carrie, gave birth to a girl, Downing Street said.

The “healthy baby girl” was born at a London hospital in the early hours and “both mother and daughter are doing very well”, a spokeswoman for the couple said.

“The couple would like to thank the brilliant NHS (National Health Service) maternity team for all their care and support,” she added.

The announcement comes as Johnson faces a backlash over the imposition of new coronavirus restrictions designed to curb the spread of the new Omicron variant.

He is also under pressure from the public after claims that Downing Street staff held a Christmas party last year in defiance of restrictions on social gatherings.

Thrice-married Johnson, 57, has four children from his second marriage to the lawyer Marina Wheeler, and now two with Carrie, 33, a former Conservative Party media adviser whom he wed in May.

The couple’s first child, Wilfred, was born in April last year, not long after Johnson was treated in hospital intensive care for Covid.

The prime minister has another child, a daughter, from an extra-marital affair.

In September, after years of speculation about how many children he had, he told NBC in an interview that he had six.

Source: AFP

At least 45 people, including a dozen minors, were killed after a bus caught fire south of the Bulgarian capital early Tuesday morning, officials said.

A cause has yet to be determined but officials believe a fire broke out on board and the bus crashed into guardrails.

There were no other vehicles involved in the accident, which occurred around 2:00 am (2400 GMT) on a highway about 40 kilometres (26 miles) from Sofia, near the village of Bosnek.

“Of the victims … 12 in total were under the age of 18,” national police chief Stanimir Stanev said.

He told bTV television that 45 of the 52 people on the bus were killed.

Nikolay Nikolov, head of the Fire Safety and Civil Protection department at the interior ministry, told public broadcaster BNT that “seven passengers survived”.

They were taken to a hospital in the capital with serious burns, he added.

According to bTV, the bus was travelling from Turkey’s main city of Istanbul to Skopje in North Macedonia.

North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said the victims were probably fellow Macedonians.

“We don’t know if all the victims are from North Macedonia, but we assume so because the bus is registered in the country,” he said in an interview with Nova TV.

But police chief Stanev said while the two drivers of the bus were Macedonian, the passengers were Albanian.

“Initial information shows that 52 people were travelling in the bus, including two drivers with Macedonian nationality and 50 passengers with Albanian nationality,” he said.

Bulgaria’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev and Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov rushed to the site of the crash Tuesday morning, while local media said that the North Macedonian and Albanian premiers were also on their way.

“It’s a terrifying picture in there. I haven’t seen anything like that before,” Rashkov told journalists at the site.

“Nobody can say for certain how many are there and who they were. The bodies are badly burned and have to be identified one by one,” he added.

Bulgaria has a history of deadly bus accidents. Seventeen Bulgarian tourists died in 2018 when their bus skidded on a wet road and overturned.

A total of 628 people died in road accidents in 2019 and 463 in 2020 in the country of 6.9 million people, according to official data. The accidents were often attributed to poor road conditions, outdated cars and speeding.

Source: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron hosted his counterpart from Benin, President Patrice Talon, on Tuesday to formally seal an agreement to return 26 artworks taken from the former French colony’s Palace of Abomey – today a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The 26 pieces, from a trove of objects snatched by French forces in 1892, were exhibited at the Quai Branly museum in Paris in the run-up to Tuesday’s ceremony. They will be shipped to the West African country in the coming days.

The decision to return them follows growing calls in Africa for European countries to return the colonial spoils from museums.

It is part of a drive by French President Emmanuel Macron to improve his country’s image in Africa, especially among young people.

The treasures are from the kingdom of Dahomey in the south of present-day Benin and include the throne of Dahomey’s last king, Behanzin, as well as three totemic statues, four palace doors, several portable altars and three warrior dance staffs.

The Élysée said Macron’s commitment for Africans to be able see their cultural wealth at home and not just in European museums “marks an important step in building a new relationship between France and Africa”.

Last month, Macron announced that a “talking drum” cherished by Ivory Coast’s Ebrie people, also at the Quai Branly, would be handed back as well.

Some museum directors have criticised the move to return works they deem of “universal” interest.

But Quai Branly president Emmanuel Kasarherou said he welcomed the “soul-searching” that those calls had triggered about the provenance of artworks.

‘Ripped from their cultures’ 

The Quai Branly, which has a vast trove of African artefacts, has begun a sweeping review of its collection of 300,000 objects.

The aim is “to identify works believed to have been taken through violence, without the owners’ consent, or as war booty or through the coercion of the colonial administration”, Kasarherou told AFP.

“Not all objects that are in European collections have been stolen,” he emphasised, but “what proportion were? Our objective is to find out.”

Since his election in 2017, Macron has gone further than his predecessors in admitting to past French abuses in Africa.

In a speech to students in Burkina Faso soon after taking office, he vowed to facilitate the return of African cultural heritage within five years.

An expert report commissioned by Macron counted some 90,000 African works in French museums, 70,000 of them at the Quai Branly alone.

The restitution calls culminated last year in a vote in the French parliament, where lawmakers overwhelmingly backed returning a group of artefacts to Benin and Senegal, another former French colony.

Macron has predicted that the 26 objects taken from the Abomey palace will be “the pride of Benin” when they are returned.

They will be exhibited at various sites in Benin, including a former Portuguese fort in the city of Ouidah, once a slave-trading hub, while awaiting the completion of a museum in Abomey to house them.

Benin’s Talon has previously said he was “not satisfied” with the “small steps” taken by France and called on Macron to go further.

Source:  AFP

Four men hijacked and set fire to a bus in a pro-British unionist community in Northern Ireland on Sunday evening, authorities said.

Police said they received a report of a hijacking incident in the Church Road area of Newtownabbey, a Belfast suburb, around 7:45 p.m.

“It was reported that four men got onto the bus and ordered passengers off before the bus was then set alight. Church Road is currently closed and diversions are in place and police would ask members of the public to avoid the area,” the Police Service of Northern Ireland said in a statement.

Bus operator Translink said the driver and a small number of passengers safely disembarked.

“Our driver is badly shaken and is currently being supported by colleagues,” the company said in a statement.

“We are very disappointed by this intimidating attack on our member of staff and public transport services in the area. We utterly condemn this behaviour and will be working closely with the PSNI to investigate this incident,” the statement said.

Last week, two masked and armed men hijacked and set fire to another bus in an attack that local media said was linked to tensions over post-Brexit trade barriers.

(Source: Reuters)

Britain’s Brexit minister threatened Monday to trigger a contentious break clause in the UK’s divorce deal with the European Union – a move that would send the UK’s already chilly relations with its huge neighbor into a deep freeze.

David Frost told a gathering of the UK’s governing Conservative Party that the Brexit agreement – which he negotiated and was signed by Britain and the EU – was undermining peace in Northern Ireland and causing “instability and disruption.”

He said unless there are major changes to the deal, Britain will invoke Article 16, a provision that lets either side suspend the agreement in exceptional circumstances.

However, Britain has made that threat before, and Frost did not pull the trigger.

“But we cannot wait forever,” he said.

The crisis straining UK-EU relations stems from trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal the two sides struck before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The regulations are intended to prevent goods from Britain entering the EU’s tariff-free single market while keeping an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland – a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. But the checks have angered Northern Ireland’s unionists, who say they impose burdensome red tape on businesses and weaken Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the UK.

Britain accuses the EU of being needlessly “purist” in implementing the agreement, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, and says it requires major changes to work.

Blaming the bloc’s “heavy-handed actions,” Frost said “the Protocol itself” was undermining Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace agreement.

“Businesses, political parties, the institutions, and indeed all in Northern Ireland face instability and disruption,” he said.

“So I urge the EU to be ambitious. It’s no use tinkering around the edges. We need significant change.”

Officials in the EU are likely to greet Frost’s ultimatum with disdain. The EU blames Britain for the disruption, accusing it of trying to renege on a legally binding deal it signed up to.

Britain has also angered the EU by delaying the introduction of checks on some goods from the bloc agreed in the divorce deal, citing the burden on businesses.

Britain’s Conservatives are holding their first in-person conference since Britain left the bloc last year. Despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s vow to “get Brexit done,” the rupture is roiling the economy as Britain tries to bounce back from pandemic disruption and damage.

A severe shortage of truck drivers, due in part to a post-Brexit exodus of European workers, has snarled British supply chains, leaving gaps on supermarket shelves, fast-food chains without chicken and gas pumps dry of fuel. Scores of soldiers have been drafted in to drive fuel tankers after more than a week of gas shortages.

AP

Britain will issue up to 10,500 temporary work visas to lorry drivers and poultry workers to ease chronic staff shortages, the government announced Saturday, in a U-turn on post-Brexit immigration policy.

The short-term visas, to run from next month until late December, come as ministers grapple with a huge shortfall in drivers and some other key workers that has hit fuel supplies and additional industries.

A tanker drivers shortage has caused large queues at petrol stations in recent days, as people ignore government pleas not to panic-buy fuel after some garages closed due to the lack of deliveries.

The decision to expand the critical worker visa scheme is a reversal by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose government had tightened post-Brexit immigration rules insisting that Britain’s reliance on foreign labour must end.

It had resisted the move for months, despite an estimated shortage of around 100,000 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and warnings from various sectors that supplies would run short.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps nevertheless insisted he was taking action “at the earliest opportunity” and that a broader package of measures announced would ensure pre-Christmas preparations “remain on track”.

“The industries must also play their part with working conditions continuing to improve and the deserved salary increases continuing to be maintained in order for companies to retain new drivers,” he added.

But one business leader dismissed the new measures as inadequate.

Millions of pounds for ‘skills bootcamps’

“This announcement is the equivalent of throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire,” said Ruby McGregor-Smith, president of the British Chambers of Commerce.

The additional testing would take time to impact while new visa numbers were “insufficient” and not “enough to address the scale of the problem”, she added.

The new measures will focus on rapidly expanding the number of new domestic drivers, and include deploying Ministry of Defence driving examiners to help provide thousands of extra tests over the next 12 weeks.

Meanwhile the education ministry and partner agencies will spend millions of pounds training 4,000 people to become HGV drivers, creating new so-called “skills bootcamps” to speed up the process.

Nearly 1 million letters will also be sent to all drivers who currently hold an HGV licence, asking any not currently driving to come back to work.

Johnson has been under increasing pressure to act, after the pandemic and Brexit combined to worsen the haulier shortage and other crises emerged, including escalating energy prices.

As well as threatening timely fuel supplies, the lack of lorry drivers has hit British factories, restaurants and supermarkets in recent weeks and months.

US burger chain McDonald’s ran out of milkshakes and bottled drinks last month, fast-food giant KFC was forced to remove some items from its menu, while restaurant chain Nando’s temporarily shut dozens of outlets due to a lack of chicken.

Supermarkets are also feeling the heat, with frozen-food group Iceland and retail king Tesco warning of Christmas product shortages.

‘It’s ridiculous’

This week it was the turn of the fuel sector, with growing lines of cars clogging the approaches to petrol stations following some closures and panic-buying, particularly in southeast England.

Drivers appeared less than reassured Saturday, as queues again formed for fuel.

Mike Davey, 56, had been waiting more than half an hour to fill up at a petrol station run by the supermarket chain Tesco in Kent, southeast of London.

“I just want to get some fuel to get to work. People are just like filling up jerry cans – it’s ridiculous,” he told AFP.

“Maybe they need to bring some army drivers in,” Davey added.

The government has so far resisted calls to deploy soldiers to help deliver petrol directly.

As part of the measures announced, taxpayers will also help pay for some adult HGV license applications in the next academic year – which can cost thousands of pounds – through an adult education budget fund.

Source: AFP