Month: February 2023

PARIS— President Emmanuel Macron is to outline on Monday France’s revamped strategy for Africa, where anti-French sentiment is running high in some of its former colonies.

His speech at the presidential palace comes two days ahead of a four-nation tour of central African countries, as Paris seeks to counter growing Chinese and Russian influence in the region.

Macron is to visit Gabon for an environmental summit, followed by Angola, then the Republic of Congo, or Congo-Brazzaville, and finally the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

The president has insisted Africa is a priority of his second mandate in power, and in July he undertook a trip to Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

The French head of state, who was re-elected last year, is set to unveil on Monday “his priorities and his method to deepen the partnership between France, Europe and the African continent”, the presidential office has said.

His address follows a 2017 speech to students at a university in Burkina Faso in which he pledged to break away from his country’s former post-colonial policies on the continent of more than 50 countries.

He criticised “the crimes of European colonisation” and called for a “truly new relationship” between Africa and Europe.

But much has changed in Burkina Faso and the wider Sahel region since.

France has fallen out with new military authorities in Mali and Burkina Faso, withdrawing its troops from both former French colonies after years helping the authorities there battle jihadists.

Alarm has grown in Paris over the growing role of Russia in French-speaking African countries, alongside a Chinese push for influence that has been apparent for some years.

France and its Western allies accuse Russian mercenary group Wagner, infamous for its activities in Syria and Ukraine, of being active in Mali and the Central African Republic, also ruled by France in the colonial era.

Reports have also suggested Wagner is seeking to implant itself in Burkina Faso, claims Moscow dismissed last week.

In recent months, Paris has accused Russia of spreading disinformation to undermine French interests in former colonies.

Macron was expected, in his speech, to give more details about the future of the French military presence on the continent after announcing in autumn the end of its Barkhane anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel.

France still has thousands of troops in the region, including in Niger and Chad, but is seeking to redeploy some towards the Gulf of Guinea and tone down its presence on the ground.

The French president was also to reiterate the need to boost ties in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

“Faced with strategic threats — the war in Ukraine as well as economic and pandemic shocks — it is crucial that Europe and Africa be as aligned and as close as possible in their dialogue,” a French presidential adviser told AFP, asking not to be named.

Macron has repeatedly urged countries of the global south to condemn the war in Ukraine.

But when the United Nations on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia immediately withdraw its troops from its pro-Western neighbour, three of the four countries Macron is visiting this week — Gabon, Angola and Congo-Brazzaville — abstained alongside China and India.

Macron will arrive in Gabon, a former French colony, on Wednesday to attend the One Forest Summit on preserving forests along the vast Congo River basin.

He will then head to the former Portuguese colony of Angola as part of a drive to enhance French ties with English- and Portuguese-speaking parts of Africa.

After Congo-Brazzaville, another former French colony, he will end his trip in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo — ruled by Belgium during the colonial era — on Friday and Saturday.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to deliver an address Monday unveiling France’s new Africa strategy.

Later in the week, the French leader travels to Gabon, Angola, the Republic of Congo and Congo.

Macron’s visit to Africa comes as many nations there have expressed an anti-France sentiment that has included street protests in some West and North African countries.

France is also finding that its long economic ties with Africa are starting to fray as Russia, China and Turkey make inroads.

In addition, Mali has replaced the French troops stationed there with Russian military contractors, something France would not like to see replicated.

The French leader will also attend a forest-themed climate summit in Gabon.

Source: Voice of America

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX was set to launch early Monday the International Space Station’s next long-duration team into orbit, with an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates and a Russian cosmonaut joining two NASA crewmates for the flight.

The SpaceX launch vehicle, consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an autonomously operated Crew Dragon capsule called Endeavour, was set for liftoff at 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The four-member crew should reach the International Space Station (ISS) about 25 hours later, Tuesday morning, to begin a six-month mission in microgravity aboard the orbiting laboratory some 250 miles (420 km) above Earth.

Designated Crew 6, the mission marks the sixth long-term ISS team that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the private rocket venture founded by Musk – billionaire CEO of electric car maker Tesla and social media platform Twitter – began sending American astronauts to orbit in May 2020.

NASA said the mission’s launch readiness review was completed Saturday, and that the flight was given a “go” to proceed to liftoff as planned.

“All systems and weather are looking good for launch,” Musk wrote on Twitter Sunday.

The latest ISS crew is led by mission commander Stephen Bowen, 59, a onetime U.S. Navy submarine officer who has logged more than 40 days in orbit as a veteran of three space shuttle flights and seven spacewalks.

Fellow NASA astronaut Warren “Woody” Hoburg, 37, an engineer and commercial aviator designated as the Crew 6 pilot, will be making his first spaceflight.

The Crew 6 mission also is notable for its inclusion of UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, 41, only the second person from his country to fly to space and the first to launch from U.S. soil as part of a long-duration space station team. UAE’s first-ever astronaut launched to orbit in 2019 aboard a Russian spacecraft.

Rounding out the four-man Crew 6 is Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, 41, who like Alneyadi is an engineer and spaceflight rookie designated as a mission specialist for the team.

Fedyaev is the latest cosmonaut to fly aboard an American spacecraft under a ride-sharing deal signed in July by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, despite heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Crew 6 team will be welcomed aboard the space station by seven current ISS occupants – three U.S. NASA crew members, including commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, the first Native American woman to fly to space, along with three Russians and a Japanese astronaut.

The ISS, about the length of a football field and the largest artificial object in space, has been continuously operated by a U.S.-Russian-led consortium that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

The outpost was conceived in part as a venture to improve relations between Washington and Moscow following the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of Cold War rivalries that gave rise to the original U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1950s and 1960s.

NASA-Roscosmos cooperation has been tested as never before since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, leading the United States to impose sweeping sanctions against Moscow while steadily increasing military aid to the Ukrainian government.

The Crew 6 mission also follows two recent mishaps in which Russian spacecraft docked to the orbiting laboratory sprang coolant leaks apparently caused micrometeoroids, tiny grains of space rock, streaking through space and striking the craft at high velocity.

One of the affected Russian vehicles was a Soyuz crew capsule that had carried two cosmonauts and an astronaut to the space station in September for a six-month mission now set to end in March. An empty replacement Soyuz to bring them home blasted off Friday and arrived at the space station Saturday.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— World Health Organization (WHO) experts have expressed their concern after two cases of humans catching H5N1 avian flu were confirmed this week. During a virtual press conference, WHO Director of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention Sylvie Briand said the situation was “worrying.”

The two cases were reported in Cambodia, where local authorities are in contact with WHO experts to jointly decide on the next steps to handle the crisis, which has led the international agency to reassess its parameters regarding the malady’s threat to humans. The conclusions reached earlier this month are now up for review.

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported the death of an 11-year-old girl from the H5N1 virus and began testing 12 of her contacts. Her father, who had shown symptoms, also tested positive for the virus, it was reported.

“The global H5N1 situation is worrying, given the wide spread of the virus in birds worldwide and the increasing reports of cases in mammals, including humans,” Briand said. “WHO takes the risk of this virus very seriously and urges all countries to intensify surveillance,” she added.

It is not yet clear whether human-to-human transmission had occurred or whether the two cases were due to the “same environmental conditions.”

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported an 11-year-old girl from Prey Veng province had died from H5N1, with subsequent testing of 12 of her contacts revealing that her father also had the virus.

“So far, it is too early to know if it’s human-to-human transmission or exposure to the same environmental conditions,” Briand said from Geneva.

“The global H5N1 situation is worrying given the wide spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals including humans,” she added. “WHO takes the risk from this virus seriously and urges heightened vigilance from all countries.”

Earlier this month, the WHO assessed the risk to humans from H5N1 bird flu as low, although its director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the recent spillover to mammals needed to be monitored closely.

“Since H5N1 first emerged in 1996, we have only seen rare and non-sustained transmission of H5N1 to and between humans. But we cannot assume that will remain the case, and we must prepare for any change in the status quo,” he said.

Bird flu is a highly infectious strain of avian influenza A virus that can cause severe respiratory disease and death in birds. While it has caused outbreaks before, the current epidemic has led to the devastation of avian populations around the world, including wild birds and commercial poultry.

From January 2003 to January 2023, there have been 868 cases of human infection worldwide, 457 of which were fatal. However, only six of these cases, and two deaths, occurred since the start of 2021.

Leading experts on influenza met this week to discuss the threat posed to humans by H5N1. The group of scientists, regulators, and vaccine manufacturers meets twice a year to decide which strain of seasonal flu to include in the vaccine for the coming winter season, in this case for the northern hemisphere.

”We are more prepared (than for COVID-19), but even if we are more prepared, we are not yet prepared enough,“ Briand said. ”We need to really continue the efforts for a flu pandemic.”

Experts have been tracking H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b since it emerged in 2020 and recent reports of mass deaths in infected mammals from seals to bears, as well as potential mammal-to-mammal transmission on a Spanish mink farm last year, have raised concern.

Several companies that produce seasonal flu vaccines can also make pandemic flu vaccines, it was reported. GSK and CSL Seqirus are already working with the United States Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to test shots based on one of the closely related strains. Having these strains ready could save about two months in the development of a vaccine, Briand said.

Source: Nam News Network

Spain has identified its first suspected case of Marburg disease.

The Spanish patient is a 34-year-old man who had recently traveled to the Central African nation of Equatorial Guinea. He was in a private hospital but has been transferred to an isolation unit at Hospital La Fe in Valencia for further tests, regional medical officials said.

Marburg virus disease, or MVD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “is a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both people and non-human primates … Primates [including people] can become infected with Marburg virus, and may develop serious disease with high mortality.”

Spanish health officials said Saturday that more than 200 people in Equatorial Guinea have recently been quarantined because of Marburg disease.

Earlier this month, two suspected cases of Marburg were detected in Cameroon near its border with Equatorial Guinea.

The World Health Organization says that the “highly virulent disease” can have “a fatality ratio of up to 88%” and “is in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola virus disease.”

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for Marburg.

Source: Voice of America