Corona Voice Angola. The tok show with Sofonie Dala. Don't miss it! Day 7

 Our coronavirus show is ongoing. Day 7

Millions people have lost their jobs, and other many have seen their earnings fall since the coronavirus pandemic began. 

Our today's guest is Gervasio, he will share with us the challenges he faces during Covid-19 pandemic.

Hello, my name is Gervasio Reis, I am from the province of Benguela, resident in the capital Luanda, I am the father of 4 children. I am here with one of my children and I have the strength to work

Well, I'm going to share my story about how the coronavirus affected me.

I worked in one of the warehouses here in the city, my boss traveled to China in search of new merchandise and until today was unable to return due to the covid-19 disease. As a result, I lost my job. I have no money to pay rent, my child is with my wife's family, I am sleeping here on the street. I have no sheets to cover myself, nor clothes and slippers.

I need help, I am asking all Angolans to help me please. I sleep on the street in this terrible condition. I cannot steal, please help me. If there is someone who can give me a job even like a servant to clean your house or wash your car to pay me 10.500 kwanza monthly I can do it.

I'm here near the garbage container and I take food in the trash to eat, I've been sleeping here and my sheets were stolen.

Linkages to permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness should continue to be a priority. Homeless people are one of the most vulnerable populations in the COVID-19 pandemic, yet they're largely invisible victims of the crisis.

This is the first and the only Coronavirus show in Angola where the most ordinary citizens show their brilliant talents.

The heroes of the program are the most ordinary citizens - they share with the audience their songs, poems and real stories of how the Coronavirus pandemic affected their lives.

Click here to watch free full webisodes: https://coronavoice-angola.blogspot.com/

Ghana: President Nana Akufo-Addo wins election

 The incumbent Ghanaian president Akufo-Addo has held on to power following the release of official results. Tensions are rising in the normally peaceful country as his opponent calls foul play.

The Ghanaian electoral commission on Wednesday declared incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo the winner of the country’s presidential election .

The 76-year-old Akufo-Addo from the center-right New Patriotic Party (NPP) beat his opponent and predecessor of the center-left National Democratic Congress (NDC) with 51.59% of the vote. It is expected that this will be his second and final term in accordance with the Ghanaian constitution.

Voters also chose 275 lawmakers for the national parliament.

Five people were killed in election violence. Otherwise, Ghana’s poll on Monday was carried out largely peacefully — a regular achievement for the West African country unlike for some of its neighbors that have seen violence following recent elections — although the process was mired by accusations of fraud before the official results were released.

Long-awaited results, but carefully counted

The electoral commission took several days to tally up the votes and had urged for patience while they were “working around the clock.”

Around 12,000 observers were present for polling day and reported only a handful of incidences of intimidation. “While there were some challenges, these challenges were isolated and did not undermine the process’s overall credibility,” a coalition of observers said on Tuesday.

Ghana has successfully carried out democratic transfers of power for almost two decades and stands in contrast to neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone where violence disrupted recent electoral processes.

The two leading candidates signed a symbolic agreement on Friday to resolve any disputes in the courts and to avoid possible violence amid the tensions of the close contest and the country’s first economic contraction in decades.

Over 60,000 security personnel had been stationed at polling stations to maintain order.

Accusations of fraud

Tensions rose on Tuesday evening as the contesting Mahama warned his opponent not to “steal” the election, accusing the sitting president of using the military to intimidate voters.

“You cannot use the military to try and overturn some of the results in constituencies that we have won. We will resist any attempts to subvert the sovereign will of the Ghanaian people,” Mahama said at a press conference in the capital Accra.

Akufo-Addo’s information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, was quick to condemn the accusations as false and “irresponsible.”

The candidate’s comments mirrored those of US President Donald Trump who lost the presidential election in November but accused his rival of stealing the election.

Failure to accept the electoral commission’s results could cast a shadow over the country’s democratic credentials.

Both sides claim success

Before the electoral commission came out with its tallied results, the NDC communications director, Sammy Gyamfi, told DW that the commission wasn’t doing its job correctly, “but they would fail because they cannot change the will of the people. We don’t want to push anyone into any early celebration. We are on course, we have 140 parliamentary seats, safe and secured.”

A man casts his vote at Wisconsin University polling station in Accra

John Boadu, general secretary of the NPP told DW of the implications of accusations coming from the NDC: “Creating insinuations creates a lack of credibility on our whole election process … We are happy to announce that for the next parliament it is obvious from the results declared across the constituencies that the NPP will still maintain a majority in parliament.”

aw, ab/mmh (Reuters, AFP)

EU, UK talks go nowhere, deadline to seal deal pushed to weekend

 British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union’s chief executive gave themselves until the end of the weekend to seal a new trade pact after failing to overcome persistent rifts over a “frank” and “lively” dinner of turbot on Wednesday.

Following Brexit, Britain drops out of the EU’s trading orbit in three weeks. Failure to agree on new rules to govern everything from trade to energy ties would snarl borders, shock financial markets and sow chaos through supply chains in a world already grappling with the economic cost of COVID-19.

“We agreed that the (negotiating) teams should immediately reconvene to try to resolve these essential issues,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the dinner, which she described as “lively and interesting”.

“We will come to a decision by the end of the weekend,” she said, adding that EU and UK positions remained “far apart”.

With fears running high of a chaotic no-deal finale to the five-year Brexit crisis, a senior UK government source said the leaders’ discussion in Brussels was “frank”.

“Very large gaps remain between the two sides and it is still unclear whether these can be bridged,” said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They added Johnson did not “want to leave any route to a possible deal untested” after the premier earlier in the day warned the EU to budge or brace for the most damaging split on December 31 as Britain completes its transition out of the bloc.

The estranged allies are bitterly at odds over fisheries, a topic politically sensitive for France, agreeing on ways to settle future trade disputes and protecting against price dumping from lower production standards.

Around $1 trillion in annual trade – currently free from tariffs and quotas – is at stake if there is no agreement.

Johnson said earlier on Wednesday that Brussels wanted Britain to comply with new EU laws in the future or be automatically punished, and that the bloc was insisting that London give up sovereign control over UK fishing waters.

“I don’t believe that those are terms that any prime minister of this country should accept,” he told the British parliament, to cheers from politicians in his Conservative Party.

He said “a good deal” could still be done if the EU scrapped its demands, but that Britain would prosper with or without a trade deal with the 27-country bloc.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the EU’s most powerful leader, told the Bundestag lower house of parliament earlier in the day the EU would not risk the integrity of its single market of 450 million consumers to accommodate Britain.

“We must have a level playing field, not just for today but for tomorrow and beyond … Otherwise, unfair competition conditions arise to which we cannot subject our companies,” she said of the so-called “ratchet clause” through which the EU is seeking to commit Britain to upgrade in sync labour, social and environmental standards, as well as state aid rules for corporate state subsidies.

“This is the really big question,” Merkel said, adding she believed an agreement was still possible.

Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba, reporting from London, said it was difficult to see how a breakthrough could emerge in the next few days.

“At the heart of it, it’s a clash of ideologies,” he said.

“Boris Johnson apparently told the other side that he couldn’t accept terms that didn’t respect the independence and sovereignty of the UK.

“For the other side, the EU wants assurances that its single market won’t be threatened through diverging standards, labour regulations, environmental standard and the like.”

Distant allies

As Johnson arrived in the cruciform Commission headquarters, von der Leyen told him to keep a distance as he was taking his face mask off to pose for a joint picture.

“Allons-y,” von der Leyen then gestured to Johnson, inviting him into meeting with their chief Brexit negotiators.

With a deal still elusive after months of tortuous talks and many missed deadlines, the EU complains that Johnson has taken Britain out of the bloc but wants to maintain membership benefits in an unrealistic bid to “have the cake and eat it”.

Brexit negotiations were expected to resume on Thursday as the 27 national EU leaders convene separately in Brussels to agree on more ambitious plans to fight climate change.

They also hope to overcome Poland and Hungary’s blocking of the EU’s next seven-year budget, worth 1.8 trillion euros, and a linked new fund to help economies recover from the deep economic recession brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, the bloc will be stepping up contingency preparations for any failure of the Brexit talks.

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Source: Aljazeera and news agencies

‘Unacceptable’: Neymar defends walkout in football racism dispute

 Paris Saint-Germain football player Neymar has defended the decision of his team and Istanbul Basaksehir to walk off the pitch in Tuesday’s Champions League match following alleged racist remarks by an official, as the world’s most expensive player stated racism “has no place in football or in life”.

PSG and Istanbul Basaksehir concluded their final group match on Wednesday, with Neymar hitting a hat-trick and saying both teams felt compelled to make a stand against racism in what was an unprecedented protest over an alleged comment by an official.

PSG won the game 5-1 after it restarted where it had stopped the previous day, in the 14th minute, following a touchline argument over accusations the Romanian fourth official, Sebastian Coltescu, had described Basaksehir’s Cameroonian assistant coach Pierre Webo as “Black”, or “negru” in Romanian.

“Sometimes in extreme circumstances these things need to be done to see if the world can change a little,” said Neymar, who together with other players and the new team of officials gathered around the centre circle and took a knee before the restart on Wednesday in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Football players and referees kneel on the pitch against racism before the UEFA Champions League group H football match between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Istanbul Basaksehir FK [Xavier Laine/AFP]

Players also sported t-shirts with the slogan “No To Racism” while warming up at the Parc des Princes, where large banners in the empty stands carried the same message.

“What happened was unacceptable. In the times we live in, we cannot accept differences being made like that about colour or race,” Neymar told French broadcaster RMC Sport. “It has no place in football, or in life, or in any sport, so our attitude was perfect.”

Coltescu and the other Romanian match officials were replaced for the restart by a new refereeing team headed by the Netherlands’ Danny Makkelie.

Basaksehir had already been eliminated from the Champions League even before this game but they left their mark on the competition with their response to the treatment of Webo, who was sent off as he reacted furiously to the alleged comment.

That red card was suspended by UEFA pending a probe, with European football’s governing body promising a “thorough investigation”.

‘Show we can live together’

“The fourth official used an unacceptable word to Pierre Achille Webo. The referee should have dealt with the situation properly but didn’t. We had to show that we were with Webo,” said Basaksehir coach Okan Buruk.

The Turkish champions had refused to restart the game on Tuesday as long as fourth official Coltescu was still involved.

“Webo was upset. We all gave him our support, but it’s someone else who should feel bad and that is the person who used the words. He is the guilty one. We have to show that we can all live together. Humanity is the most important thing.”

Television microphones in the empty stadium picked up a furious Webo repeatedly asking why a racist term had been used to describe him.

In the exchange in question between the all-Romanian officiating team, Coltescu said: “The Black one over there. This is not possible. Go and identify him. That guy, the Black one.”

Basaksehir’s Senegalese forward Demba Ba could be heard remonstrating with the official in English, saying: “When you mention a white guy, you never say ‘this white guy’, you just say ‘this guy’, so why when you mention a Black guy do you say ‘this Black guy?’”

The incident drew reaction from around the world, with Rio Ferdinand, the former Manchester United and England defender and now a TV pundit, saying on BT Sport in the UK: “I think we are at a disturbing tipping point. Not a week goes by without an incident involving race.

“The players walking off is a step in the right direction, but it can’t just be left to them.”

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Source: News agencies

ANGOLA AND RWANDA ANALYSE CANDIDACIES TO AU POSTS

 The candidacies of the Angolan Josefa Sacko for the post of AU Commissioner for agriculture, rural development , blue economy and sustainable environment, as well as that of the Rwandese Monique Nsanzabaganwa, for the vice chair of the African Union Commission, were analysed last Tuesday by the both countries’ permanent representatives to the African Union (AU).

The Angolan diplomat, Francisco José da Cruz, received his Rwandese counterpart, Hope Tumukunde Gasatura, in the premises of the Angolan diplomatic mission to Ethiopia, since both are also  ambassadors to that east African country.

On a note, the Angolan ambassador to Ethiopia states that the two diplomats also discussed , in general terms, the electoral process for the selection of  senior staff for the AU, which is scheduled to happen in February 2021.

The meeting also served for the analysis of the results of the previous two extraordinary summits, held over the last weekend, dedicated to the materialization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Peace and Security situation.

The Angolan diplomat, Francisco da Cruz, has recently also had meetings with his counterparts from Algeria, Libya, Western Sahara, Estonia and Armenia.

COVID-19: ANGOLA REPORTS 117 RECOVERIES, 81 NEW INFECTIONS

 Angola reported the recovery of 117 Covid-19 patients and 81 new infections, the Health authorities announced Tuesday evening in Luanda.

According to the national director for Public Health, Helga Freitas, the new positive cases involve people aged from one month to 78 years, including 21 females and 60 males.

The official said of the new infections Luanda reported 37, central Benguela (31), central Huambo (06), central Cuanza Sul and northern Zaire provinces with five each.

Central Bié and northern Uíge have reported two positive cases each, while eastern Moxico and northern Cuanza Norte have detected one.

Angola’s Covid-19 figures show 15,729 positive cases, 355 death, 8,470 recoveries and 6,904 active patients.

COVID-19: ANGOLA RECOVERS 109 PATIENTS IN LAST 24 HOURS

 The Angolan ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economy and Planning, in partnership with the European Union (EU) Delegation in Angola, are to promote this Wednesday the first meeting for the effective setting up of the Steering Committee for the project dubbed “EU/Angola Dialogue Facilitation”.

The Steering Committee was created in January 2020 with a view to energizing the agreement dubbed “Acordo Caminho Conjunto” (Joint Path agreement) signed between the Republic of Angola and the European Union, intended to boosting bilateral dialogue in priority domains such as security, good governance, human rights and migration, as well as economic growth, sustainable development, energy, research, innovation and climate changes.  

The Angolan Foreign minister, Téte António, has recently said that “Angola sees the EU as an important partner for its economic and social development”.

The Joint Path agreement was signed in July 2012, in Brussels, Belgium.

 

COVID-19: ANGOLA RECOVERS 109 PATIENTS IN LAST 24 HOURS

 The Angolan health authorities have registered 75 new positive cases of covid-19, 109 recovered and three deaths in the past 24 hours.

Speaking at the usual update session on the pandemic, the secretary of State for Public Health, Franco Mufinda, said that of the newly infected, whose ages range from three months to 72 years, 43 are men and 32 women.

Of the respective positive cases, 42 were diagnosed in Luanda, 16 in Zaire, eight in Huambo, Uige and Bié with two cases each, while Bengo, Cuanza Norte, Cuanza Sul, Benguela and Lunda Sul notified one case each.

Of those recovered, 33 were registered in Lunda Norte province, 27 in Huila, 22 in Huambo, 21 in Luanda, four in Cuanza Sul, two in Benguela, aged between 1 and 63.

The three deaths were reported in Zaire province, two of them male and one female, aged 39, 44 and 56, respectively.

With these data, Angola has a total of 15,804 positive cases, of which 358 deaths, 8,579 recovered and 6,867 active.

Of the active people, five are in critical condition, six severe, 90 moderate, 131 mild and 6,635 asymptomatic.

The country's treatment centres control 232 patients.