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Chad ANTI-GOVERNMENT protesters ransacked and torched the party headquarters of Chad’s newly appointed Prime Minister Saleh Kebzabo this week as security forces dispersed demonstrations calling for a quicker transition to democratic rule.

The military-run Central African nation has been on edge since the death in April 2021 of president Idriss Deby, who ruled with an iron fist for three decades. He was killed while visiting troops fighting rebels. There has been resistance to a transitional military council headed by Deby’s son, who took power and pushed back elections to October 2024.

Demonstrators used burning tyres to block roads in N’djamena. | Reuters

Britain

LIZ Truss said on Thursday she was resigning as British prime minister just six weeks after she was appointed, brought down by an economic programme that sent shockwaves through financial markets last month and divided her Conservative Party.

Truss accepted that she could not deliver the promises she made. A leadership election will be completed within the next week to replace Truss, the shortest serving prime minister in British history. Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt are believed to be in the running. New finance minister Jeremy Hunt is racing to find tens of billions of pounds of spending cuts to try to reassure investors. | Reuters

Pakistan

PAKISTAN will ask international lenders for billions of dollars in loans after devastating floods exacerbated the nation’s economic crisis.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif this week said the country needed

“huge sums of money” for rebuilding infrastructure damaged or washed away. He said there was an estimated $30 billion (about R550bn) in flood losses.

Earlier this month, the UN raised its humanitarian aid appeal for Pakistan to $816 million from $160m, amid a surge in water-borne diseases and hunger.

A decline in Pakistan’s currency is also pushing up the cost of imports, borrowing and debt servicing. | Reuters

Geneva

THE World Health Organization (WHO) says it is too early to lift the highest-level alert for the Covid-19 crisis.

The WHO’S emergency committee on Covid-19 has concluded that the pandemic still constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

The WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the committee emphasised the need to strengthen surveillance and expand access to tests, treatments and vaccines.

More than 622 million cases and more than 6.5 million deaths have been reported to the WHO. | AFP

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