US exhorts donors to give far more as Somalia faces famine
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The first U.S. Cabinet member to visit Somalia since 2015 urged the world’s distracted donors Sunday to give immediate help to a country facing deadly famine, which she calls “the ultimate failure of the international community.”
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, heard perhaps the starkest warning yet about the crisis: Excess deaths during what is now Somalia’s longest drought on record will “almost certainly” surpass those of the famine formally declared in the country in 2011, when more than a quarter-million people died.
This time, the world is looking elsewhere, many humanitarian officials say.
“Many of the traditional donors have washed their hands and focused on Ukraine,” the U.N. resident coordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, told Thomas-Greenfield during a briefing in Mogadishu.
The European Union has funded just 10% of the humanitarian response plan for Somalia last year, Abdelmoula said. The EU gave $74 million and the U.K. $78 million, according to U.N. data. Japan gave $27 million and Saudi Arabia $22 million.
The United States has funded 80%, giving $1.3 billion to Somalia since the start of the 2022 fiscal year. The ambassador announced another $40 million Sunday.
But the U.S. “can’t continue to pay at that level, even if there were no Ukraine,” Thomas-Greenfield said, adding that Washington would like to see countries in the nearby Gulf region donate more.
“According to the U.N., without contributions from other donors, critical food and nutrition assistance supporting 4.6 million people in Somalia will end” by April, Thomas-Greenfield said.
Body in SUV: Family members and a forensic expert are questioning why Kansas City police didn’t find a man’s body in the cargo area of his own SUV until after they towed it to a Missouri police station earlier this month.
Adam “A.J.” Blackstock Jr.’s death is being investigated as a homicide, according to The Kansas City Star.
The newspaper reported that police defended how they handled the situation because they didn’t have a search warrant when they had the vehicle towed Jan. 17, and Blackstock had yet to be reported missing.
One forensic expert told the newspaper that police should have looked inside the vehicle before they moved it.
Pension debate in France:
France’s prime minister insisted Sunday that the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 is “no longer negotiable,” further angering parliamentary opponents and unions who plan new mass protests and disruptive strikes this week.
Raising the pension age is one part of a broad bill that is the flagship measure of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term. The bill is meeting widespread popular resistance — more than 1 million people marched against it earlier this month — and misunderstanding about what it will mean for today’s French workers.
In an interview with France-Info radio broadcast Sunday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the age “is no longer negotiable.”
Retirement at 64 and a lengthening of the number of years needed to earn a full pension “is the compromise that we proposed after having heard employers’ organizations and unions,” she said.
A union-led online petition against the plan saw a surge in new signatures after Borne’s comments.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fired the chairman of the governing Conservative Party on Sunday for a “serious breach” of ethics rules in failing to come clean about a tax dispute.
Sunak had faced days of pressure to sack Nadhim Zahawi amid allegations he settled a multimillion-dollar unpaid tax bill while he was in charge of the country’s Treasury.
The prime minister acted after a standards probe found Zahawi had breached the ministerial code of conduct. It said he had failed to disclose details of his dispute with tax authorities
Sunak fires official:
and that he had paid a penalty.
Zahawi had acknowledged the tax dispute but argued his error was “careless and not deliberate.”
Iran factory targeted:
Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said Sunday, causing some damage at the plant amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian Defense Ministry offered no information on who it suspected carried out the attack, which came as a refinery fire separately broke out in the country’s northwest and a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing three people.
Tehran has been targeted in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Mideast rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed.
Tensions also remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan
after a gunman attacked that country’s embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.
Voters in Tunisia shunned parliamentary elections seen as an important test for their president and their country’s troubled democracy, according to preliminary turnout figures Sunday. Independent observers reported scattered violations.
Turnout was just 11.3% of Tunisia’s 8 million voters, according to preliminary estimates from the national electoral commission. That is about the same level of participation as in the first round of voting last month.
Many disaffected Tunisians stayed away, and the influential Islamist party Ennahdha and other opposition movements boycotted.
The runoff elections were being watched around the Arab world. They’re seen as a conclusive step in President Kais Saied’s push to consolidate power, tame Islamist rivals, and win
Tunisia elections:
back lenders and investors needed to save the teetering economy.
Election officials are expected to announce the official preliminary results Wednesday.
Nigeria crashes fatal: Two separate road crashes involving trucks in southern Nigeria left 20 people dead including children, authorities said Sunday, with many of the victims burned beyond recognition.
In Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos, a truck carrying a heavy container landed on a commercial bus on a busy bridge in the Ojuelegba area of the city, Dr. Olufemi Oke-Osanyintolu with the state emergency response agency said in a statement.
Only one woman survived while nine passengers including two children died in the crash, he said.
Earlier on Sunday, another truck collided with a bus in Odigbo council area of Ondo state near Lagos, killing all 11 on board, said Nigeria’s road safety agency.