“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: They do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to his life?
Why do you worry about clothing? Think about how the flowers of the field grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, won’t he clothe you even more, you people of little faith? So then, don’t worry saying,
‘What will we eat?’ Or ‘What will we drink?’ Or ‘What will we wear?’ For the unconverted pursue these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But above all pursue his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.
AU/CIEFFA in collaboration with UNESCO IICBA, SAVE THE CHILDREN and the Permanent Delegation of Norway to the African Union is organizing an online meeting under the theme of "Reflection on Girls' Education in Africa on International Women's, #ChooseToChallenge."
The event will be held on Friday 12th March 2021 from 11:00 am to 12:15 pm (GMT).
Kindly find attached a save the date with the link to join the meeting.
UNESCO is pleased to announce the launch of the call for nominations of the 2021 UNESCO Prize for Girls' and Women's Education.
Funded by the Government of the People's Republic of China, the Prize annually awards US $ 50,000 to two laureates to continue their work in providing girls and women the education they deserve.
Interested candidates meeting the selection criteriaare invited to contact their Permanent Delegations to UNESCO, National Commissions for UNESCO or NGOs in official partnership with UNESCO to participate.
The nomination processtakes place via an online platform, accessible to UNESCO Member States and NGOs in official partnership with UNESCO.
We invite you to help us widely disseminate the call for the #GWEPrizewithin your networks and via your channels to give all champions of girls' and women's education a chance to participate.Sample messages and visuals are available in 6 languages!
Luanda - At least 5300 people, among health professionals and elderly people, were vaccinated against Covid-19, this Tuesday, in Luanda.
These were 4,450 health professionals and 850 elderly people and people with comorbidities, who have been attended to since last Saturday, as part of the mass vaccination campaign.
In four days of the campaign in the country, which began in the Angolan capital, 11,469 people have been vaccinated. The operation will take place in Luanda throughout the week, at the vaccination centre set up at the Paz Flor Tourist Complex.
The centre, with capacity to vaccinate 6,000 people per day, operates with 48 technicians and has capacity to vaccinate around 3,000 people per day.
According to the health authorities, after Luanda, it is followed by professionals from the provinces of Benguela and Cabinda. The three provinces have the highest number of active cases of Covid-19.
Government targets
The vaccination process outlined by the government will initially cover 20 percent of the Angolan population, totalling 6.4 million people with continuous exposure, such as health workers, social services and public order and security personnel, people with risk categories and aged 40 or over.
Angola has received 624,000 doses of vaccine against Covid-19, as part of the Covax Initiative.
In total, 52 percent of the population, or 16.8 million citizens over the age of 16, are expected to be vaccinated.
By the end of June, the country expects to receive 6.4 million doses of AstraZeneca or other available doses to cover the needs of the first stage of the Covid-19 Vaccination roll out.
The Indian-made Astrazeneca vaccine is one of the three most widely used in the world to prevent infection, with a scientific efficacy of almost 90 per cent.
The health authorities announced on Tuesday the recovery of 20 patients and the registration of six new cases and one death, in the last 24 hours.
According to the epidemiological bulletin, the new cases were diagnosed in Luanda, with three, and Cunene, also with three.
The patients range from 22 to 57 years old, two of them male and four female.
The death was registered in Luanda, involving a 66-year-old Angolan citizen.
Of those recovered, 12 are residents in Luanda, four in Bié, three in Huíla and one in Cunene.
Angola has a record of 21,114 cases, with 516 deaths, 19,677 recovered and 921 active.
Of the active cases, three are in critical condition with invasive mechanical ventilation, seven are severe, 32 moderate, 25 with mild symptoms and 854 asymptomatic.
The national laboratories processed, in the last 24 hours, 538 samples.
In the inpatient centers, 67 patients are being treated, while 28 people are under institutional quarantine centers.
The health authorities are keeping 1,371 contacts of positive cases under epidemiological surveillance.
The State Minister for Social Affairs, Carolina Cerqueira, Wednesday assessed with the International Coordinator of Luanda Biennale, Enzo Fazzino, issues related to the 2nd edition of Luanda Biennale - Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace.
During the audience, which was also attended by Ambassador Sita José and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Vieira Lopes, the State minister stressed the need to count on the active participation of African countries, taking into account the purposes of the event, which will take place in October this year.
"Since the African Union has assumed the importance of the biennium as a matter of peace and security at the continent level, the event should be placed as a priority on the African agenda," said Carolina Cerqueira.
The government official stressed that this is an opportunity for Angola, once again, to reaffirm its example and leadership in terms of safeguarding and educating for peace in Africa, in particular, and in the world in general.
According to the minister, the good results of the first edition held in 2019, led UNESCO to once again support Angola in holding the second edition.
Carolina Cerqueira also stressed the importance of involving youth, academics, businessmen, religious leaders and women because, in her view, they have a fundamental role in the progress of the African continent, in a climate of sustainable and permanent peace.
After the Black Lives Matter protests in both North America and Europe last year, there has been an ongoing push to include more black history into school curricula in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. But despite Europe’s complicated past of slavery and colonization, some complain that much is missing from the school program.
Last year’s Black Lives Matter movement in the United States also sparked mass protests in many European countries. While the protests have ended, there is an ongoing push for change behind the scenes.
Lavinya Stennett is the founder of the Black Curriculum, a group in Britain whose aim is to have Black history taught year ‘round, not only in October when Britain marks Black History Month.
She says that except for a little on slavery, Black history was not something she learned in school. Stennett says she has seen a huge increase in interest from schools that want to work with her organization since the Black Lives Matter protests.
“Before when we were running the organization, there would be opportunities for us to work with schools, but it kind of seemed like the only schools that were doing it were the ones that were already during this kind of work, right,” said Stennett . “So I think after that Black Lives Matter, what we saw was just an outpouring of all different types of schools from across the country, rural areas as well, who understood that point that they could not progress without going forward with this.”
Britain, after establishing dominance over many black people over the centuries, still hasn’t included Black history as mandatory in its schools.
France has a similar program going, but some complain the process of introducing Black history in schools has been slow. Maboula Soumahoro, a French scholar in African studies says the only black history she was taught at a school was while she was studying in the United States.
Part of the problem, she says, is that France does not officially recognize racial identities. She hopes things will be different in the future.
“There will be changes because the demography is evolving, because the protest is growing more accepted by the mainstream” said Soumahoro. “And there will be more public conversations needed and also a need for the evolution of the institutions including school curricula. So yes, there will be change, but it’s going to be long and difficult. ”
Despite a 2001 law requiring slavery to be discussed in French schoolbooks, advocates say the impact was minimal because the role of France in its African colonies was mostly overlooked.
They point to how schools in Germany - which in 1904 carried out the first genocide of the 20th century in what is now Namibia - rarely mention that history.
Amarachi Adannaya Igboegwu is a doctoral student whose focus is on preparing teachers for working in classrooms where students are of diverse backgrounds - something that is becoming more common in Germany. She thinks it is important that teachers themselves are educated before they can teach parts of history that have been ignored in the past.
“We have to recognize that Germany is a very diverse country, right. And how to identify, you know, implicit biases and how implicit biases can impact the teaching, ”said Igboegwu. “The importance of critical self-reflection about their own history and personal narratives and how their background also impacts the way they teach.”
Other European countries with histories of African colonization, slavery, and repression include Portugal, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Most initiatives to change the curriculum in Europe to include Black history in a more critical way have come from organizations and individuals pushing for change and inclusion.
It’s an expression of anger but also of helplessness: Anti-government protesters in Lebanon are burning tires to block key roads, releasing dense palls of smoke that rise above the capital of Beirut and other parts of the country.
The tactic has become the hallmark of a new flare-up of demonstrations against an intransigent political class that appears to do little as Lebanon slides toward political and economic abyss. The country is mired in the worst economic crisis in its modern history, and the situation has been exacerbated by pandemic restrictions and an overwhelmed health care sector.
“The fire releases our anger. It quiets our hearts, ”said Mounir Hujairi, a 23-year-old protester from Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon, who juggles his time between low-paying day jobs and protests.
The tire soot and smoke blacken the faces of protesters in anti-virus masks at makeshift roadblocks that cut off traffic around Beirut and between cities. The persistence of the protesters and the daily burning of tires underscore how intractable the country’s problems have become.
Anti-government rallies first began gripping Lebanon in late 2019. Since then, the local currency has collapsed, after being pegged to the dollar for nearly 30 years. Salaries have remained the same as inflation skyrocketed. People lost their jobs and poverty affected nearly 50% of the population.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s sectarian-based political system is stuck. Politicians have refused to compromise on forming a government or on making difficult financial decisions for fear of losing their clout or support base.
Exhausted, scared and restricted by the coronavirus, Lebanese have watched as members of the ruling elite blame each other for the crisis.
Last week, the currency hit a record low, trading on the black market at 11,000 Lebanese pounds to the dollar, down from the official 1,500 pounds for $ 1 - sparking a new wave of protests.
“The solution will only come through the streets,” said Hujairi, who has taken part in protests since October 2019. “Of course, those whose streets - or the streets of their political parties - are blocked will be angered.”
The roadblocks are a desperate way to reclaim the anger felt nationwide in 2019, when the government was forced to resign, sparking a brief period of euphoria and hope that change may be possible.
The national mood is now more fearful. Officials have warned of chaos and some have argued the protests were manipulated by political groups to ignite violence or extract concessions from rivals.
Many fear the social tension has reached levels not seen since before the civil war broke out in April 1975. For the next 15 years of conflict, burning tires became common - a cheap way to set up roadblocks between warring factions.
Tire fires are hard to put out and can go on for hours, drawing attention and keeping rivals away.
The tactic has been used in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Sudan.
Palestinians burned tires during protests against Israeli occupation, starting in their first uprising that erupted in 1987. Three decades later, during protests against an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade of the Gaza Strip, young men formed “tire crews” that drove around the small coastal territory in motorcycle rickshaws to collect tires for burning. The dark black smoke served to obscure the identities of those throwing stones at Israeli forces.
Open tire fires, which were used in some countries to power kilns, have been outlawed in most of the world because of their high emission of pollutants.
Sahar Mandour, a Lebanon researcher with Amnesty International, said the practice of burning tires as a form of protest picked up in many countries in the 1980s. But it has since fallen out of favor because of the environmental impact.
“The world moved on. … But Lebanon didn’t, ”she said. "We have the same parties and the same leaders, so the tools are the same."
Hujairi claims he and his friends his burn between 100 and 150 tires a day. He said they collect used and punctured tires from refuse piles, dismissing claims that political parties hand them out.
“A little black smoke won’t hurt,” Hujairi said, in response to criticism. "There is no way for us to reach the houses of politicians."
On Wednesday, Lebanese troops deployed to prevent protesters from setting up roadblocks, two days after the president, Michel Aoun, called for action to prevent them.
The unmasked woman had her say on Instagram after viral video showed her coughing on a driver and grabbing his cellphone in San Francisco.
An unmasked woman who coughed on an Uber driver in San Francisco and grabbed his cellphone in a profane rage admitted she was disrespectful, but claimed the situation could have been avoided.
Video of the confrontation went viral while police investigate. No arrests had been made as of Tuesday, cops told HuffPost. Names of the passengers haven’t been released.
According to police, the driver picked up the three women on Sunday but ended the ride a short time later because one refused to wear a mask. That ’s when the confrontation erupted, with one of the passengers coughing on the driver, snatching his cellphone from him, and pulling off his mask from him, while the two others screamed profanities and insults.
In a social media clip spotted by San Francisco's CBS affiliate on Tuesday, the coughing passenger gave her side of the story, downplaying her aggression. "All I did was take his mask off and cough a little bit," she said.
“OK, yeah, I ain’t gonna lie,” she continued. “That was disrespectful as fuck. I was dead-ass wrong for that. But it could have been avoided. ”
She accused the driver of trying to drop the passengers in an unsafe neighborhood. "He could have just waited and made sure we were safe," she said.
She threatened to sue Uber, which in a statement on Monday called the behavior of the passengers “appalling” and banned her. Then she made an impromptu endorsement of Uber’s rival.
"That’s why I take Lyft!" she declared.
Not anymore she doesn’t. Lyft banned her as well.
“Although this incident did not involve the Lyft platform, the unacceptable treatment of the driver in this video compelled us to permanently remove the rider from the Lyft community,” the ride-hailing company said in a statement to KPIX. “Driving in a pandemic is not easy. Please wear a mask, respect one another, and be a good person. ”
The driver, Subhakar Khadka, said one of the women pepper-sprayed him as they left the vehicle. Khadka, 32, from Nepal, also said the women yelled bigoted remarks because he’s an immigrant.
In other videos that preceded the altercation, the women refuse to leave the vehicle until another Uber arrives, and Khadka threatens to let them off “in the middle of the freeway” if they don’t exit immediately, CBS noted.
Nigeria says funds recovered from former Delta state Governor James Ibori will be used to help complete infrastructure projects.
The United Kingdom and Nigeria have signed a deal to return to the latter 4.2 million pounds ($5.84m) recovered from a former state governor who was jailed in London for money laundering.
James Ibori, who was the governor of southern Nigeria’s oil-producing Delta state from 1999 to 2007, pleaded guilty at London’s Southwark Crown Court in 2012 to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering.
He received a 13-year jail sentence and spent four years behind bars for using public funds to buy luxury homes, top-of-the-range cars and a private jet.
“This is the first time that money recovered from criminals will be returned to Nigeria [from the UK] since an agreement was signed in 2016 to recover and return the proceeds of bribery or corruption in a responsible and transparent way,” the UK’s home and the foreign office said in a statement.
Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s attorney general, said the funds will be used to help complete a number of infrastructure projects, including a road connecting the capital, Abuja, and the northern commercial hub Kano.
“I am confident that both the Nigerian and British governments remain committed to all affirmative actions to combat corruption … [and] illicit financial flows,” Malami said at a ceremony at which officials from the two countries signed an agreement on the return of the funds.
The UK’s Home Office Minister Baroness Williams described the deal as “a significant moment”, saying it sent a clear message “to criminals that we will relentlessly pursue them, their assets and their money”, while Minister for Africa James Duddridge said the two countries “will continue to work together to tackle crime and corruption”.
Ibori was at some point one of Nigeria’s richest and most powerful men.
Anti-corruption campaigners had hailed the case as a milestone for Nigeria, where no one of his statures had been successfully prosecuted, and for its former colonial ruler Britain, long seen as too complacent about the proceeds of Nigerian corruption being laundered in the UK.
The former aid worker has been released from house arrest but has been unable to return to the UK.
Boris Johnson has demanded the “immediate release” of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in a phone call with Iran’s president.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released from house arrest and had her ankle tag removed at the weekend after a five-year prison term expired.
In a phone call with Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister told Iran’s president that the treatment of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “completely unacceptable”.
Mr Johnson demanded the former aid worker’s “immediate release”, as well as that of other British-Iranian dual nationals detained in Iran.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “He said that while the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle monitor was welcome, her continued confinement remains completely unacceptable and she must be allowed to return to her family in the UK.”
How long has Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe been held in Iran?
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran airport while taking her infant daughter to see her parents in April 2016.
The 42-year-old was later jailed over disputed allegations she was plotting to overthrow Iran’s government.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe, accompanied by the couple’s six-year-old daughter Gabriella, attended a vigil outside the Iranian embassy in Knightsbridge, central London, on Monday.
There is nervousness among Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family over the announcement of a new court date next Sunday – in front of the same judge who sentenced her last time.
They are uncertain if it will just be a formality to return her passport, or whether a new sentence will be handed down.
“We don’t know and I think there’s a few more sleepless nights ahead of us,” her sister-in-law, Rebecca Ratcliffe, told Sky News at the weekend.
Tulip Siddiq, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s local MP in north London, has expressed fears the court date could result in “fake charges” to extend her sentence.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was allowed to move to her parents’ home a year ago due to the coronavirus threat in prison.
She was under house arrest and had been wearing a tracker tag that limited her to 300m (984ft) from their Tehran flat.
Why has she not yet been allowed to return to the UK?
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had the ankle tag removed and can now move around, as long as she does not leave Iran.
It has been suggested she is continuing to be held in the country as part of decades of wrangling linked to a £400m tank deal.
What else did the PM and Mr Rouhani talk about?
Mr Johnson and Mr Rouhani were also said to have discussed the Iran nuclear deal, which new US President Joe Biden has said he wants to restore after his predecessor Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018.
“The prime minister also stressed that while the UK remains committed to making the Iran nuclear deal a success, Iran must stop all its nuclear activity that breaches the terms of the JCPoA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and come back into compliance,” the spokesperson added.
“He stressed the importance of Iran seizing the opportunity presented by the United States’ willingness to return to the deal if Iran comes back into compliance.
“The prime minister underlined the need for Iran to cease wider destabilising activity and be a positive force in the Gulf region.”
Libya, a major oil producer, has been mired in conflict since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi. The sometimes chaotic war has drawn in several outside powers and a flood of foreign arms and mercenaries.
Since 2015, Libya has been divided between the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and its House of Representatives (HoR) in Tobruk, allied to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.
Dbeibah’s comments came during the second day of a parliamentary debate on his proposal for a new interim government, where he denounced a “fierce campaign” carried out by “those who want to destroy our country, who want to occupy it”.
A UN-supervised process aims to unite the country after an October ceasefire between the two rival administrations.
Last week, an advance team of a UN observer mission arrived in Libya tasked with monitoring the ceasefire and verifying the departure of the thousands of foreign fighters.
In December last year, the UN said about 20,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters were still in Libya and a January 23 deadline for their withdrawal passed without any sign of them pulling out.
Proposed government
Dbeibah, who submitted his proposed government to Parliament for approval last week, pleaded for lawmakers to vote in favour of it.
“We have no choice but to come to an agreement, for the future of our children,” Dbeibah said, to the applause of Parliament.
Dbeibah was selected in February at UN-sponsored talks, attended by a cross-section of Libyans, to steer the country towards December 24 elections.
The process has been marred by allegations of vote-buying, but the interim premier defended the composition of his proposed government.
“My first objective was to choose people with whom I would be able to work, no matter where they come from,” Dbeibah said.
The members of his government “must be able to work for all Libyans in all of Libya, not just for their region or their city”, he insisted.
Economic crisis
More than 130 of a total of 188 lawmakers began meeting on Monday in Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, to debate the proposed cabinet. The Mediterranean port city lies halfway between Tripoli, where the western government is based, and the east, where Parliament has sat in recent years and which is home to the rival administration.
The United Nations Support Mission in Libya, or UNSMIL, called the parliament’s meeting “historic” and praised the convening of a “reunified session after many years of divisions and paralysis”.
Dbeibah, 61, a billionaire businessman from the western town of Misrata, was selected alongside an interim three-member presidency council to head the new unity administration.
If approved, the interim government will face the daunting challenge of addressing the many grievances of Libyans, from a dire economic crisis and soaring unemployment to crippling inflation and wretched public services.
Lawmakers will continue debate for a third day on Wednesday to “finalise deliberations before voting”, politician Ismail al-Sharif told AFP news agency.
Dbeibah’s proposed government includes two deputy prime ministers, 26 ministers and six ministers of state, with the key foreign and justice portfolios handed to women, a first in Libya.
But the strategic post of defence remains deeply contested.
“All parties are fighting over this portfolio,” Dbeibah said.
The Misrata-native has until March 19 to win approval for his cabinet.
