Chad president welcomes ‘complete’ departure of French forces

(From L to R) Chadian Foreign Minister Abderraman Koulamallah, Chadian Prime Minister Allamaye Halina, Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby, First Vice-President of the National Transition Council Ali Kolotou Tchaimi and Chief of Staff General of the Chadian Armed Forces (CEMGA ) Abakar Abdelkerim Daoud sit as they attend the ceremony marking the end of France’s presence in Chad and the Sahel at the Adji Kossei Air Base in N'Djamena on January 31, 2025. (AFP)

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Updated 31 January 2025

AFP

January 31, 2025 23:15

Chad president welcomes ‘complete’ departure of French forces

Soldiers and fighter aircraft from France have been stationed in Chad almost continuously since the country’s independence in 1960, helping to train the Chadian military

Updated 31 January 2025

AFP

January 31, 2025 23:15

N’DJAMENA: President Mahamat Idriss Deby on Friday welcomed the “definitive and complete departure” of French forces from Chad, which marks the end of France’s last foothold in the wider terrorist-hit Sahel region.
After a closed-door military ceremony a day earlier, Deby addressed Chadian forces and diplomats at an event in the capital, N’Djamena.
The handover of the Kossei base, the French army’s last such facility in the central African country, follows Chad’s surprise breaking off military cooperation with its former colonial ruler in late November.
“We are not breaking off our relationship with France, but we are ending the military dimension of this cooperation,” Deby said at the base where only the Chadian flag was flying.
Chad must build an “even stronger, better-equipped army” and “forge new alliances based on mutual respect and without losing sight of the demands of independence and sovereignty,” he added.
Soldiers and fighter aircraft from France have been stationed in Chad almost continuously since the country’s independence in 1960, helping to train the Chadian military.
The country had been a key link in France’s military presence in Africa.

Topics: chad

Rare bone-eroding disease ruining lives in Kenya's poorest county

Updated 8 sec ago

AFP

May 10, 2025 02:23

Rare bone-eroding disease ruining lives in Kenya's poorest county

Updated 8 sec ago

AFP

May 10, 2025 02:23

LODWAR, Kenya: Joyce Lokonyi sits on an upturned bucket, fingers weaving palm fronds as the wind pulls her dress to expose the stump of her amputated foot, lost to a little-known disease ravaging Kenya's poorest county.
Mycetoma is a fungal or bacterial infection that enters the body through any open wound, often as tiny as a thorn prick.
Starting as tiny bumps under the skin, it gradually leads to the erosion of tissue, muscles and bone.
The fungal variety is endemic across the so-called "mycetoma belt" -- including Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and northern Kenya -- with funding and research desperately lacking.
Once the disease has reached the bone the only option is amputation.
"I was able to slightly walk, although the disease had eaten all my toes," Lokonyi, 28, told AFP.
She was shunned by the local community, she said.
"They used to say that when you go to someone's home, you will leave traces of the disease where you stand."
She was unable to afford medication despite her husband selling off his goats, and amputation became the only option.
"I accepted because I saw that it was going to kill me," she said, a pair of battered crutches lying on the sand beside her two-year-old daughter.
But she has struggled with the aftermath.
"I have become a good-for-nothing, I can't work, I can't burn charcoal, I can't do anything," she said.
In Kenya's poorest county, Turkana, around 70 percent of the population lives beneath the poverty line, with healthcare limited and hard to reach.
Mycetoma disproportionately affects rural communities of farmers and herders, according to the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative , a global NGO.
It was only recognised as a neglected disease by the World Health Organization in 2016. Ignorance and misdiagnosis remain widespread.
"Doctors are not aware of the disease," Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, DNDi's head of mycetoma research, told AFP.
"If you're used to donkeys, you don't start seeing zebras everywhere."
The scale of the problem is difficult to estimate, but Ekiru Kidalio, director of Lodwar Hospital in Turkana, said they "rarely go a week without finding a case".
He added that the local population, 80 percent of which is illiterate, often turns to traditional medicine.
By the time they come to hospital "the condition is already advanced such that it's not easy to reverse".
Medication is also expensive -- treatment takes up to a year and costs as much as $2,000 -- and comes with dizzying side effects.
Diagnosis and treatment are not free under Kenya's overwhelmed health system, leaving patients at the mercy of foreign donors or seeking sums that are unimaginable for subsistence farmers.
In Lodwar Hospital, lab technician John Ekai bends over his microscope and examines a suspected mycetoma sample.
"Mycetoma is a very neglected disease, no-one is giving it attention," he told AFP.
He has become the go-to man for suspected patients, handling his charges with a mischievous sense of humour that puts them at ease.
Ekai has treated more than 100 mycetoma patients in the past year, but has seen only five recoveries, with many simply vanishing back into Turkana's arid plains.
He worries for those who have disappeared: "The mycetoma will grow and grow and maybe... lead to amputation."
During AFP's visit, he examined young mother Jennifer Ekal, 19, who had lived with the disease since she was 11.
"I was in school but I decided to leave because of my foot," she said, showing her swollen and painful extremity, hidden beneath a red-and-white dishcloth.
Four doses of medication a day appeared to be helping, she said.
But as she gathered up her daughter, three-year-old Bianca, she admitted she was worried about the future.
"I do not want to think about the worst."

Topics: Kenya Mycetoma

Pakistan vows retaliation, saying three bases targeted by Indian missiles

Updated 8 min 23 sec ago

Fatimah Amjad

May 10, 2025 02:15

Pakistan vows retaliation, saying three bases targeted by Indian missiles

Army says Nur Khan base, Murid base in Chakwal district and one Shorkot targeted by Indian missiles
Reports came after Chaudhry said in sudden statement India fired ballistic missiles that fell in Indian territory

Updated 8 min 23 sec ago

Fatimah Amjad

May 10, 2025 02:15

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Military Spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said on Saturday India had attacked multiple bases in Pakistan, vowing retaliation.

In the latest confrontation between the two longstanding enemies that began on Wednesday, India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites in Pakistan in retaliation for what it says was a deadly Islamabad-backed attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22. Pakistan says it was not involved and denied that any of the sites hit by India were militant bases. It said it shot down five Indian aircraft on Wednesday.

Pakistan’s military said on Friday it shot down 77 drones from India at multiple locations, including the two largest cities of Karachi and Lahore, and the garrison city of Rawalpindi, home to the army’s headquarters.

On Saturday early morning, panic rang out in Pakistan as reports emerged that Pakistan Air Force’s Nur Khan base had been hit.

The Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, where the military has its headquarters, is around 10 kilometers from the capital, Islamabad.

In televised remarks, the military spokesman said three bases, Nur Khan, PAF Base Murid, an operational flying base of the Pakistan Air Force located near the village of Murid in the Chakwal District of Punjab, and one in Shorkot, had been targeted by Indian missiles.

“Now you just wait for our response,” Chaudhry said.

The reports came after Chaudhry said India fired ballistic missiles that fell in Indian territory, announcing it in a sudden statement on national broadcaster at 1:50 a.m. local time on Saturday (2050 GMT), with no details provided to support the claim.

“I want to give you the shocking news that India fired six ballistic missiles from Adampur. One of the ballistic missiles hit in Adampur, the rest of the five missiles hit in the Indian Punjab area of Amritsar,” the army’s spokesman said in his short video statement.

Amritsar’s district commissioner in a text message between Friday and Saturday said:

“Don’t panic. Siren is sounding as we are under red alert. Do not panic, as before, keep lights off, move away from windows. We will inform you when ready to resume power supply.”

Around 48 people have been killed since Wednesday’s conflagration, according to casualty estimates on both sides of the border that have not been independently verified.

Topics: Pakistan India

Conflict, extreme weather worsening hunger in West and Central Africa, WFP warns

Updated 28 min 21 sec ago

Reuters

May 10, 2025 01:45

Conflict, extreme weather worsening hunger in West and Central Africa, WFP warns

Report flaggs food inflation, made worse by rising fuel costs and recurrent extreme weather in the central Sahel
Conflicts have displaced 10 million people in the region, including 8 million internally displaced inside Nigeria and Cameroon

Updated 28 min 21 sec ago

Reuters

May 10, 2025 01:45

DAKAR, Senegal: Some 52 million people in West and Central Africa will struggle to meet their basic food and nutrition needs in the upcoming lean season, driven by conflict, extreme weather and economic deterioration, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.
In the lean season — a period between harvests when food supplies are very low and which runs from June to August — nearly three million of those people throughout the region will face emergency levels of hunger, while 2,600 people in Mali could face catastrophic hunger, the United Nations body said, citing a new food security analysis.
The report flagged food inflation, made worse by rising fuel costs in countries including Ghana, Guinea and Ivory Coast, and recurrent extreme weather in the central Sahel, around the Lake Chad Basin and in the Central African Republic.
Conflicts have displaced 10 million people in the region, the WFP said, including eight million internally displaced inside Nigeria and Cameroon.
The report did not include the Democratic Republic of Congo, where fighting has surged in the east this year as Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have staged a major advance.
Some 28 million people face acute hunger there, a record for the central African country, according to a report released in late March by the WFP and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
It said 2.5 million more people had become acutely hungry in Congo since the surge of violence in December.
According to the five-phase classification system used by the WFP, crisis-level hunger (Phase 3) is one step below emergency levels of hunger (Phase 4). Phase 5, the most serious, is classified as catastrophic hunger — or, in some cases, famine.

Topics: Global warming World Food Programme climate change

US to accept white South African refugees while other programs remain paused

Updated 15 min 25 sec ago

May 10, 2025 01:29

US to accept white South African refugees while other programs remain paused

Updated 15 min 25 sec ago

May 10, 2025 01:29

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration will welcome more than two dozen white South Africans to the United States as refugees next week, an unusual move because it has suspended most refugee resettlement operations, officials and documents said Friday.
The first Afrikaner refugees are arriving Monday at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press. They are expected to be greeted by a government delegation, including the deputy secretary of state and officials from the Department of Health and Human Services, whose refugee office has organized their resettlement.
The flight will be the first of several in a “much larger-scale relocation effort,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.
The Trump administration has taken a number of steps against South Africa, accusing the Black-led government of pursuing anti-white policies at home and an anti-American foreign policy. The South African government denies the allegations and says the US criticism is full of misinformation.
While State Department refugee programs have been suspended — halting arrivals from Afghanistan, Iraq, most of sub-Saharan Africa and other countries in a move being challenged in court — President Donald Trump issued an executive order in February prioritizing the processing of white South Africans claiming racial discrimination.
“What’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. “This is persecution based on a protected characteristic — in this case, race. This is race-based persecution.”
Efforts to get white South Africans to the US
Since Trump’s executive order, the US Embassy in Pretoria has been conducting interviews, “prioritizing consideration for US refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” the State Department said.
The department said nothing about the imminent arrival of what officials said are believed to be more than two dozen white South Africans from roughly four families who applied for resettlement in the US Their arrival had originally been scheduled for early last week but was delayed for reasons that were not immediately clear.
The HHS Office for Refugee Resettlement was ready to offer them support, including with housing, furniture and other household items, and expenses like groceries, clothing, diapers and more, the document says. “This effort is a stated priority of the Administration.”
HHS didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
Supporters of the refugee program questioned why the Trump administration was moving so quickly to resettle white South Africans while halting the wider refugee program, which brings people to the US who are displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution and involves significant vetting in a process that often takes years.
“We are concerned that the US Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need,” Church World Services president Rick Santos said in a statement. His group has been assisting refugees for more than 70 years.
Letting in white South Africans while keeping out Afghans is “hypocrisy,” said Shawn VanDiver, who heads #AfghanEvac, which helps resettle Afghans who assisted the US during the two-decade war.
“Afghans who served alongside US forces, who taught girls, who fought for democracy, and who now face Taliban reprisals, meet every definition of a refugee,” he said. “Afghans risked their lives for us. That should matter,” he said.
Trump administration has accused South Africa of anti-white policies
The Trump administration alleges the South African government has allowed minority white Afrikaner farmers to be persecuted and attacked, while introducing an expropriation law designed to take away their land.
The South African government has said it was surprised by claims of discrimination against Afrikaners because white people still generally have a much higher standard of living than Black people more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule.
South Africa is the homeland of close Trump adviser Elon Musk, who has been outspoken in his criticism, and it also holds the rotating presidency of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio notably boycotted a G20 foreign ministers meeting in Johannesburg in March because its agenda centered on diversity, inclusion and climate change. He also expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the US in March for comments that the Trump administration interpreted as accusing the president of promoting white supremacy.
Shortly thereafter, the State Department ended all engagement with the G20 during South Africa’s presidency. The US is due to host G20 meetings in 2026.
What South Africa says about the refugees
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement Friday that he had spoken with Trump late last month on issues including US criticism of the country and allegations that Afrikaners are being persecuted. Ramaphosa told Trump that the information the US president had received “was completely false.”
“Therefore, our position is that there are no South African citizens that can be classified as refugees to any part of the world, including the US,” the statement said.
The South African foreign ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Alvin Botes spoke with US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on Friday about the refugees. Landau is expected to lead the delegation to welcome the group Monday.
South Africa “expressed concerns” and denied allegations of discrimination against Afrikaners, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” the statement said. It noted that the country has worked to prevent any repeat of the type of persecution and discrimination that happened under apartheid rule.
The foreign ministry said it would not block anyone who wanted to leave as it respected their freedom of movement and choice.
But it said it was seeking information about the “status” of the people leaving South Africa, wanting assurances that they had been properly vetted and did not have outstanding criminal cases.
The foreign ministry added that South Africa was “dedicated to constructive dialogue” with the US.

Topics: Trump Returns South Africa South African refugees Donald Trump immigration

Trump admin ‘looking at’ suspending right to court challenge for detainees

Updated 58 min 57 sec ago

AFP

May 10, 2025 01:22

Trump admin ‘looking at’ suspending right to court challenge for detainees

Updated 58 min 57 sec ago

AFP

May 10, 2025 01:22

WASHINGTON: A senior White House official said Friday that President Donald Trump, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown, is looking at suspending habeas corpus, the right of a person to challenge their detention in court.
“The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters.
“So it’s an option we’re actively looking at,” Miller said. “A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”
Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an “invasion.”
Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process.
Among other measures, the Republican president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court.
The AEA was last used to round up Japanese-Americans during World War II and was previously invoked during the War of 1812 and World War I.
Suspending habeas corpus could potentially allow the administration to dispense with individual removal proceedings and speed up deportations, but the move would almost certainly be met with stiff legal challenges and end up in the Supreme Court.
It has been suspended only rarely in US history, most notably by president Abraham Lincoln during the 1861-1865 Civil War and in Hawaii after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Topics: Trump Returns

Chad president welcomes ‘complete’ departure of French forces

Chad president welcomes ‘complete’ departure of French forces

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Rare bone-eroding disease ruining lives in Kenya's poorest county

Rare bone-eroding disease ruining lives in Kenya's poorest county

Sudan war destroys world’s only research center on skin disease mycetoma: director

Mycetoma victims find help in Sudan

Pakistan vows retaliation, saying three bases targeted by Indian missiles

Pakistan vows retaliation, saying three bases targeted by Indian missiles

Conflict, extreme weather worsening hunger in West and Central Africa, WFP warns

Conflict, extreme weather worsening hunger in West and Central Africa, WFP warns

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US to accept white South African refugees while other programs remain paused

US to accept white South African refugees while other programs remain paused

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Trump admin ‘looking at’ suspending right to court challenge for detainees

Trump admin ‘looking at’ suspending right to court challenge for detainees

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Chad president welcomes ‘complete’ departure of French forces

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