WORLD - The African Mirror

Aug

25

2020

‘I could have suffocated’: Peru’s pandemic tensions burst with nightclub tragedy

WORLD

MARCO AQUINO PERU, battling one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks and a five-month lockdown, was reeling on Monday after the deaths of 13 people, most of them young women, in a stampede at an illegal nightclub triggered by a police raid. The tragedy at the club, which authorities called "a breeding ground" for COVID-19, has exposed tensions in the Andean nation of 33 million people that has one of the world's worst per capita fatality rates with almost 28,000 deaths. Infections are rising again in a dangerous second wave and total almost 600,000, the sixth highest in the world.…

Aug

24

2020

By The African Mirror

Belarusian protesters, defying army, flood Minsk

WORLD

TENS of thousands of protesters demanding Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko step down defied a warning from the military and flooded into Minsk, briefly gathering near the president's residence, before dispersing peacefully. The veteran leader denounced the demonstrators as "rats" and was seen in state media footage wearing body armour and holding a rifle, projecting an unyielding image amid the huge nationwide demonstrations that erupted after a disputed election on August 9. The protests have provided the biggest challenge yet to Lukashenko's 26 years at the helm and tested the loyalty of his security forces. Minsk's streets turned red and white…

Aug

24

2020

By The African Mirror

Trump’s sister says, in secret recordings, he has ‘no principles’ and is cruel

WORLD

TED HESSON U.S. President Donald Trump's sister, a retired federal judge, called him a liar with "no principles" in audio recordings made public this weekend, the latest attack on the president's character in the run-up to the November 3 election. Maryanne Trump Barry, 83, also criticized the Republican president for "phoniness" and "cruelty" in interviews that were secretly recorded by her niece Mary Trump during a series of conversations in 2018 and 2019, according to The Washington Post, which obtained the recordings from her. The remarks surfaced days before Republicans convene to back Trump for another four years in the…

Aug

23

2020

By The African Mirror

US isolated in the UN Security Council

WORLD

MICHELLE NICHOLS THE United States has been further isolated over its bid to reimpose international sanctions on Iran with 13 countries on the 15-member U.N. Security Council expressing their opposition, arguing that Washington's move is void given it is using a process agreed under a nuclear deal that it quit two years ago. In the 24 hours since U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he triggered a 30-day countdown to a return of U.N. sanctions on Iran, including an arms embargo, long-time allies Britain, France, Germany and Belgium as well as China, Russia, Vietnam, Niger, Saint Vincent and the…

Aug

22

2020

By The African Mirror

Lori Loughlin apologizes for college scam as actress, husband get prison sentences

WORLD

NATE RAYMOND "FULL HOUSE" actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli were sentenced on Friday to respective prison terms of two months and five months for participating in a vast U.S. college admissions scam. Loughlin, 56, choked up as she apologized to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston for the "awful decision" she made to try to help her daughters gain an "unfair advantage" in the college admissions process. She and her husband were sentenced after they pleaded guilty in May to engaging in a fraud scheme aimed at securing spots for their daughters at the…

Aug

21

2020

By The African Mirror

Steve Bannon, key to Trump’s rise, arrested on fraud charges linked to border wall

WORLD

SARAH N LYNCH and ANDY SULLIVAN STEVE BANNON, an architect of Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, was arrested on a yacht and charged with defrauding donors in a scheme to help build the president's signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, prosecutors said. As a top adviser to Trump's presidential campaign who later served as White House chief strategist, Bannon helped articulate the "America First" right-wing populism and fierce opposition to immigration that have been hallmarks of Trump's 3-1/2 years in office. Trump fired Bannon from his White House post in August 2017. Bannon, 66, was among four people arrested and…

Aug

21

2020

By The African Mirror

Flood victims take to social media as rains cause chaos in India’s Gurugram

WORLD

NEHA ARORA HEAVY rains flooded parts of witter, an Indian city that plays host to some of the world's biggest tech companies, and residents took to social media to seek help by posting pictures of waterlogged roads and apartments. Gurugram, a satellite of New Delhi, is one of India's wealthiest cities and has offices of global corporations such as Google, Facebook and Uber. It had been showcased as India's "Millennium City", but clogged drains and poor civic amenities cause flooding almost every monsoon season. The weather office on Thursday warned of "very heavy rainfall" over northern parts of India, including…

Aug

21

2020

By The African Mirror

Russia to begin COVID-19 vaccine trials on 40,000 people next week

WORLD

MASS testing of Russia's first potential COVID-19 vaccine to get domestic regulatory approval will involve more than 40,000 people and will be overseen by a foreign research body when it starts next week, backers of the project have announced. These were the first details on the shape and size of the upcoming late-stage trial of the vaccine given by its developers, who are aiming to allay concerns among some scientists about the lack of data provided by Russia so far. The vaccine, called "Sputnik V" in homage to the world's first satellite launched by the Soviet Union, has been hailed…

Aug

31

2020

By The African Mirror

A PICTURE AND ITS STORY-The despair of a Rio widow, in a city struggling with violence

WORLD

FOR Ricardo Moraes, a veteran photographer who for 11 years has documented for Reuters life in Rio de Janeiro's often dangerous cinderblock slums known as "favelas", work began at about 6 a.m. on Thursday, when he heard a radio report of a hostage situation in Sao Carlos, a sprawling tangle of hillside homes near the city centre. The images he would capture - a young woman, kneeling over her husband's body, overcome with grief and surrounded by heavily armed police - ultimately would appear on the front pages of Brazil's two largest newspapers. They resonated in a city fed up…

Aug

31

2020

By The African Mirror

Beirut port blast death toll rises to 190

WORLD

THE death toll from this month's Beirut port blast has risen to 190 with more than 6,500 injured and three people missing, Lebanon's caretaker government said in a report. Lebanese authorities are probing what caused highly explosive material stored unsafely for years to detonate in a mushroom cloud, wrecking swathes of the city and fuelling anger at a political class already blamed for the country's economic meltdown. The army said on Saturday that seven people were still missing - three Lebanese, three Syrians and one Egyptian. It was not immediately clear if some had since been found. The August 4…