Africa

A group of archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass have discovered a 3,000-year-old Egyptian city, named "The Rise of Aten." The city, which is the largest ancient city found, dates back to the reign of the ninth king of the 18th dynasty King Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from 1391 and 1353 BCE.

“Within weeks, to the team’s great surprise, formations of mud bricks began to appear in all directions,” Hawass said. “What they unearthed was the site of a large city in a good condition of preservation, with almost complete walls, and with rooms filled with tools of daily life.”

A UN Mission in Mali has just reported 19 civilians gathered for a wedding died in a French army air strike targeting jihadists in January in central Mali. France denies any wrongdoing.

Shipping traffic has resumed through Egypt’s Suez Canal on Monday after the container cargo ship Ever Given was successfully refloated and moved.

"The efforts to float the delinquent Panamanian container ship Ever Given are successful," so Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority.

The MS Ever Given, the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week, has been successfully refloated on Monday, authorities confirm.

"The container ship began to float successfully after responding to the pulling maneuvers," said Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA). "Once the ship is withdrawn, we will resume navigation directly, and we will take it to the Bitter Lakes."

A collision between two passenger trains in central Egypt on Friday left at least 32 people dead, the Egyptian health ministry announced. Dozens of ambulances raced to the crash scene in the Tahta district of Sohag province, around 460 kilometres south of the capital Cairo.

"The trains collided while going at not very high speeds, which led to the destruction of two carriages and a third to overturn," a security source told Reuters.

Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, leading opposition presidential candidate in Republic of Congo's election, died on Sunday, a day after the country went to the polls. Kolelas was hospitalized on the eve of the elections and died of Covid-19 as he was being taken to France for treatment, his campaign director Christian Cyr Rodrigue Mayanda told AFP news agency on Monday. A video circulating on social media dated Friday showed Kolelas, 61, wearing an oxygen mask and with a blood pressure cuff on his arm as he lay in a hospital bed.

John Magufuli, the president of Tanzania, died at the age of 61 after not being seen in public for two weeks. The official statement said he died of a heart condition. Tundu Lissu, the opposition leader, previously claimed Magufuli had contracted Coronavirus and aides of Magufuli reportedly also got infected with Coronavirus. Magufuli had been a prominent Coronavirus denier.

Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire Hamed Bakayoko died of cancer on Wednesday in a hospital in Freiburg (Germany). He had just turned 56 on March 8th.

President Alassane Ouattara wrote on Twitter: "Our country is in mourning. I am deeply saddened to announce the death of Prime Minister Hamed Bakayoko, Head of Government, Minister of Defense, this Wednesday March 10, 2021, in Germany, as a result of cancer.

The Prime Minister of Mauritius, Mr. Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, has announced, this evening, during a televised address to the nation, that a lockdown will be implemented from 10 March 2021 at six am till 25 March 2021, following an increase in Covid-19 cases.

He indicated that the virus is now to be found in several clusters adding that new positive cases have been detected today which are not from the initial cluster.

As part of the restrictions, all activities will remain closed except for the police, port, airport, fire services, health, pharmacy, and security services.

Essential services that will operate on 10 March 2021 are health services, fire services, security services, petrol facilities, security services, pharmacy services, and retail distribution chains.

Supermarkets, superettes, shops, bakeries, and petrol stations will remain closed tomorrow but will reopen on 11 March 2021 with strict sanitary measures. Access to these services will be in alphabetical order.

The Prime Minister confirmed that a local case of COVID-19 has been detected in Mauritius and it is a person working in a company dealing with products from South Africa. To this end, he stressed that additional precautions have been taken to avoid the risk of contamination in the country.

A Chinese-flagged trawler containing 130 tonnes of oil ran aground off the Indian Ocean archipelago nation Mauritius. It is the second shipwreck in less than a year off Mauritius, after a tanker struck a reef in July and leaked 1,000 tonnes of fuel in the country's worst environmental disaster in history.

Fisheries Minister Sudheer Maudhoo said the captain of the Lurong Yuan Yu, a trawler flying the Chinese flag, issued distress calls late Sunday afternoon. By the time the government issued an urgent appeal for international help the slick had reached the shore, coating mangrove forests, fragile ecosystems and coral reefs. The disaster was unprecedented for Mauritius, an archipelago of 1.3 million people where many derive their livelihood from tourism and fishing, and tens of thousands marched in protest over the government's handling of the crisis.

Luca Attanasio, Italy's ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been killed in an armed attack.

According to diplomatic sources in Kinshasa, the ambassador to his injuries on Monday after an attack on a World Food Programme convoy near the city of Goma in the east of the country.

A policeman from the escort and the driver also died.

In Guinea at least three people died of the Ebola virus in the past weeks. These are the first reported cases of Ebola since the country was declared Ebola-free in 2016.

"The government reassures the people that all measures are being taken to stem this epidemic as soon as possible," Guinean minister of health Rémy Lamah.

Uganda's longtime President Yoweri Museveni has been elected for a sixth term with nearly 59 percent of the vote, according to the state election commission. Museveni's main rival, Bobi Wine, received just under 35 percent of the vote, the electoral commission said Saturday.

Thursday's presidential and parliamentary elections were preceded by one of the most violent election campaigns in years. At least 54 people died, government critics were intimidated or jailed, and journalists who had covered opposition events were attacked. On election day itself, a massive security force ensured calm, and the Internet has been blocked ever since.

Real-time network data shows that national internet connectivity in Uganda has fallen to 33% of ordinary levels following a government order to shut down the internet for the general population ahead of the general elections.

South Africa has surpassed 1 million cases of the Coronavirus. The new and more contagious strain 501.V2 is spreading more dominantly in many areas of the resurgence, experts say.

“We are not helpless in the face of this variant,” infectious disease specialist, Dr Richard Lessells told Associated Press. “We can change our behaviour to give the virus less opportunities to spread.”

Another new variant of the coronavirus was discovered in South Africa that is unrelated to the one found in the UK. The new strain, known as 501.V2, is causing a rise in new infections in the country.

Professor Salim Abdool Karim, chairman of the government’s Ministerial Advisory Committee: “It is still very early but at this stage, the preliminary data suggests the virus that is now dominating in the second wave is spreading faster than the first wave.”

After a massacre carried out by rebels in western Ethiopia on Sunday, survivors have counted 54 bodies in a schoolyard, according to Amnesty International.

The attack deliberately targeted the ethnic Amhara minority. The prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, has denounced the attack and stated that security forces had been sent to the area and "started taking measures".

An American abducted in Niger on Monday and taken to Nigeria has been rescued by the US Navy's elite SEAL Team 6.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman: "U.S. forces conducted a hostage rescue operation during the early hours of 31 October in Northern Nigeria to recover an American citizen held hostage by a group of armed men. This American citizen is safe and is now in the care of the U.S. Department of State. No U.S military personnel were injured during the operation."

Opposition leaders have joined thousands of opposition supporters to protest President Alassane Ouattara's plan to seek a third term in the Oct. 31 presidential election. People held banners that said "The people say no to an illegal third term" and "Stop to a third term".

Ouattara has been in power for almost a decade and has announced he'd run for a third term after his chosen successor's sudden death.

President Lazarus Chakwera has reversed his campaign promise to create one million jobs. He justified his action by saying that the government could only employ 200,000 people and could not create more jobs on its own. Chakwera calls on every entrepreneur to employ more people.

Critics have accused Chakwera that he had no job creation plan and that his promise was nothing more than a campaign strategy.

After the military coup that deposed former president Boubacar Keïta, Mali appointed the Bah Ndaw as interim president until elections in 2022. Ndaw, a former Defence Minister and retired colonel, will have Colonel Assimi Goita as vice president.

The junta of Mali has come under intense pressure from leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to return power to civilians after the coup on August 18. It is still not clear if a government led by Ndaw would satisfy ECOWAS conditions to avoid economic sanctions and even a total embargo on the landlocked country.

Zimbabwe banned coal mining in all national parks. Previously the country allowed two Chinese firms to explore for coal in the country's biggest national park Hwange. The decision came after campaigners, in an effort to prevent "ecological degradation" in parks, took the government to court.

Numerous species live in the national parks, including 40,000 elephants and the endangered black rhino.

"Steps are being undertaken to immediately cancel all mining titles held in national parks," Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said as she announced the ban. The ban is effective with immediate effect.

The state of emergency in Mozambique will be lifted on Monday, September 7th. President Filipe Nyusi makde the announcement on TV on Friday, saying: “We are proud of the measures we have taken that have allowed the spread of the disease to be contained.”

Schools in Zimbabwe are not allowed anymore to expel pupils who get pregnant. Women's rights campaigners said this would help tackle gender inequality in schools and stop many girls from dropping out of school.

Cain Mathema, the education minister in charge of schools, has stated that "I'm expecting every parent and guardian and everyone else to understand that every child must be assisted by all of us to go to school" as many parents of pregnant girls, or the girls themselves, decide to quit schooling due to the pregnancy, and schools do not always do enough to encourage them to stay.

Mali's Air Force Chief Ismail Wague, on behalf of a "National Committee for the Rescue of the People", announced the military's plan for new elections "after a reasonable period of time" during a TV address. "We do not want to hold on to power, but to the stability of the country," said the General. Mali should be equipped with "strong institutions" that would restore the people's confidence in their government. A transitional government should be appointed and new elections organized.

Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta has resigned the presidency of Mali after being detained by soldiers. Keïta addressed the nation and stated he was also dissolving the government and the parliament.

The resignation came hours after Keïta and the former Prime Minister Boubou Cissé were taken to a military camp.

Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairman of the African Union, condemned news of the arrests, in a tweet: "I strongly condemn the arrest of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the Prime Minister and other members of the Malian Government and call for their immediate release."

Under the leadership of the African Union the three in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) involved countries Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt have announced that they'll continue negotiations over the management of the dam.

The water and foreign ministers of the countries have agreed "to work on unifying the texts of the agreements submitted by the three countries" according to the water ministry of Sudan.

Malawi has made masks mandatory in public places starting Friday night. Violations will be fined $15. Activists are urging the government to provide free masks. The government has also closed all shops located near hospitals and forbid public gatherings. Malawi has around 100 confirmed daily cases.

A suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car at the gates of the military base "12th April Army Brigade" in Mogadishu, Somalia. Officials have reported the death of 8 people so far and over a dozen injured. The base is located near the newly reopened stadium in the Warta-Nabadda district.

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabaab militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Côte d'Ivoire President Alassane Outtara said he will run for re-election in October. Outtara has already served the maximum of two terms. Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly was supposed to be his successor for the upcoming election, but he died earlier this month.

Outtara went on television and said: "Faced with this case of force majeure and out of civic duty, I have decided to respond favourably to the call of my fellow citizens asking me to be a candidate in the presidential election of 31 October 2020."

The opposition has condemned this move and pointed out that the constitution forbids a third term.