Twitter boss Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sells for $2.9m

 The tweet was sold as a non-fungible token, unique digital assets that are growing rapidly in popularity; the proceeds were given to a charity working with COVID-affected families in Africa.

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has sold his first tweet from over a decade ago in the form of a unique digital asset for slightly more than $2.9m.

The tweet was sold on Monday as a non-fungible token (NFT) – a kind of digital certificate that has exploded in popularity so far in 2021. The token is a digital seal of authenticity that confirms an item is one of a kind and real.

Each NFT has its own blockchain-based digital signature, which serves as a public ledger, allowing anyone to verify the asset’s authenticity and ownership. They can be attached to digital art or pretty much anything else that comes in digital form – audio files, video clips or animated stickers.

NFTs have recently swept the online collecting world where they are being used to solve a problem central to digital collectables: how to claim ownership of something that can be easily and endlessly duplicated. A digital artwork by the artist Beeple sold for more than $69.3m in an online auction by a British auction house earlier this month, with an NFT as a guarantee of its authenticity.

Dorsey’s tweet – “just setting up my twttr” – made on March 21, 2006, was his first.

The NFT was sold via auction on a platform called Valuables, which is owned by US-based company Cent. It was bought using the cryptocurrency Ether (ETH), for 1630.5825601 ETH, which was worth $2,915,835.47 at the time of sale, Cameron Hejazi, the CEO and co-founder of Cent confirmed.

Cent confirmed the buyer is Sina Estavi. Estavi’s Twitter profile, @sinaEstavi, says he is based in Malaysia and is CEO of blockchain company Bridge Oracle. When asked for comment about the purchase, Estavi told the Reuters news agency he was “thankful”.

On March 6, Dorsey, who is a Bitcoin enthusiast, tweeted a link to the website where the NFT was listed for sale. He then said in another tweet on March 9 that he would convert the proceeds from the auction into Bitcoin and donate them to people affected by COVID-19 in Africa.

‘Everydays – The First 5000 Days’ by the digital artist Beeple features what is known as a non-fungible token that digitally attaches the artist’s signature to it [Christie’s Images Ltd via Reuters]

Dorsey receives 95 percent of the proceeds of the primary sale, while Cent receives 5 percent.

Dorsey tweeted the Bitcoin receipt Monday afternoon and said the funds were sent to the charity, GiveDirectly’s Africa Response.

“Incredible – huge thanks @jack and @sinaEstavi – looking forward to getting this $ into recipients’ hands soon,” GiveDirectly tweeted following Dorsey’s announcement.

Cent’s Hejazi said his platform allows people to show support for a tweet that goes beyond the current options to like, comment and retweet.

“These assets might go up in value, they might go down in value, but what will stay is the ledger and the history of ‘I purchased this from you at this moment in time,’ and that’s going to be in both the buyer, the seller and the public spectators’ memory,” Hejazi said, adding that assets such as these are “inherently valuable.”

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Profile: Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s new president

 Samia Suluhu Hassan is a soft-spoken, veteran politician unexpectedly thrust from the role of vice president to become Tanzania’s first female leader after John Magufuli’s sudden death.

Hassan, 61, made history on Friday when she was sworn in at a ceremony in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam before a roomful of dignitaries.

It’s not a good day for me to talk to you because I have a wound in my heart,” said Hassan. “Today I have taken an oath different from the rest that I have taken in my career. Those were taken in happiness. Today I took the highest oath of office in mourning,” she said in her maiden speech.

Under the constitution, Hassan will serve the remainder of Magufuli’s second five-year term, which does not expire until 2025.

A former office clerk and development worker, Hassan began her political career in 2000 in her native Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous archipelago, before being elected to the national assembly on mainland Tanzania and assigned a senior ministry.

She rose through the ranks of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) until being picked by Magufuli as his running mate in his first presidential election campaign in 2015

The CCM comfortably won and Hassan made history when she was sworn in as the country’s first ever female vice president.

The pair were re-elected last October in a disputed poll the opposition and independent observers said was marred by irregularities.

She would sometimes represent Magufuli on trips abroad but many outside Tanzania had not heard of Hassan until she appeared on national television on Wednesday wearing a black headscarf to announce that Magufuli had died at 61 following a short illness.

In a slow and softly spoken address – a stark contrast to the thundering rhetoric favoured by her predecessor – Hassan solemnly declared 14 days of mourning.

“This is the time to stand together and get connected. It’s time to bury our differences, show love to one another and look forward with confidence,” she said.

“It is not the time to point fingers at each other but to hold hands and move forward to build the new Tanzania that President Magufuli aspired to,” she said, amid opposition claims about the cause of Magufuli’s death.

She will consult the CCM over the appointment of a new vice president. The party is set to hold a special meeting of its central committee on Saturday.

Al Jazeera’s Catherine Wambua-Soi, reporting from Kenyan capital Nairobi, said: “She has just given her maiden speech and it was a very emotional tribute to her predecessor John Magufuli.”

Analysts say Hassan will face early pressure from powerful Magufuli allies within the party, who dominate intelligence and other critical aspects of government, and would try and steer her decisions and agenda.

“For those who were kind of expecting a breakaway from the Magufuli way of things I would say hold your breath at the moment,” said Thabit Jacob, a researcher at the Roskilde University in Denmark and an expert on Tanzania.

“I think she will struggle to build her own base … We shouldn’t expect major changes.”

But Al Jazeera’s Wambua-Soi said that analysts in Tanzania told her that Hassan’s “leadership style is very different from the late president. They say she listens to counsel more and is not one to make unilateral decisions.”

Hassan’s leadership will also be tested on her response to the coronavirus pandemic, which her predecessor dismissed.

“A lot of people are looking to see if she will change strategy. Magufuli had faced a lot of criticism for how he handled the disease. He never put the country in lockdown and never encouraged people to wear masks or sanitise,” the Al Jazeera correspondent said.

Hassan’s loyalty to Magufuli, nicknamed the “Bulldozer” for his no-nonsense attitude, was called into doubt in 2016.

Her office was forced to issue a statement denying she had resigned as rumours of a rift grew more persistent, and Hassan hinted at the controversy in a public speech last year.

When you started working as president, many of us did not understand what you actually wanted. We did not know your direction. But today we all know your ambitions about Tanzania’s development,” she said in front of Magufuli.

Hassan was born on January 27, 1960 in Zanzibar, a former slaving hub and trading outpost in the Indian Ocean.

Then still a Muslim sultanate, Zanzibar did not merge formally with mainland Tanzania for another four years.

Her father was a school teacher and her mother, a housewife. Hassan graduated from high school but has said publicly that her finishing results were poor, and she took a clerkship in a government office at 17.

By 1988, after undertaking further study, Hassan had risen through the ranks to become a development officer in the Zanzibar government.

She was employed as a project manager for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and later in the 1990s was made executive director of an umbrella body governing non-governmental organisations in Zanzibar.

In 2000, she was nominated by the CCM to a special seat in Zanzibar’s House of Representatives. She then served as a local government minister – first for youth employment, women and children and then for tourism and trade investment.

In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly on mainland Tanzania. Then-President Jakaya Kikwete appointed her as Minister of State for Union Affairs.

She holds university qualifications from Tanzania, Britain and the United States. The mother of four has spoken publicly to encourage Tanzanian women and girls to pursue their dreams.

“I may look polite, and do not shout when speaking, but the most important thing is that everyone understands what I say and things get done as I say,” Hassan said in a speech last year.

Hassan is the only other current serving female head of state in Africa alongside Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde, whose role is mainly ceremonial.

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Name of vaccine Russia’s Vladimir Putin to take will be a secret, says Kremlin

 MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday it had deliberately decided it would not reveal the name of the Russian-made vaccine which President Vladimir Putin is due to take later on Tuesday.

“We are deliberately not saying which shot the president will get, noting that all three Russian (-made) vaccines are absolutely reliable and effective,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

He said Putin, who announced his intention to get vaccinated a day earlier, would probably be vaccinated in the evening and would receive one of the three Russian-made shots.

Peskov said Putin had already done a lot to promote Russian-made vaccines, the most famous of which is Sputnik V. Moscow has also given emergency approval to two other domestic vaccines, EpiVacCorona and CoviVac.

Peskov said that Putin did not like the idea of being vaccinated on camera.

Reporting by Dmitry Antonov/Alexander Marrow; Editing by Andrew Osborn

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Gunmen on motorbikes raid Niger villages, kill at least 137

 Newly elected President Mohamed Bazoum denounces ‘barbaric’ attacks in the border region near Mali.

Attackers on motorbikes have raided several villages in southwestern Niger, killing at least 137 people in the bloodiest violence to hit the country in years, the government said.

The gunmen on Sunday attacked the villages of Intazayene, Bakorat and Wistane, located near the border with Mali, shooting “at everything which moved”, according to a local official.

On Monday, the government said the attacks had left 137 people dead. Local officials have previously given a death toll of at least 60.

“In treating civilian populations systematically as targets now, these armed bandits have gone a step further into horror and brutality,” government spokesman Zakaria Abdourahamane said in a statement read on public television.

The coordinated raids underscore the greatest challenge facing Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s new president whose election victory in a runoff vote last month was confirmed on Sunday by the country’s top court.

Niger, the world’s poorest nation according to the United Nations’ development rankings for 189 countries, is struggling with armed campaigns that have spilled over from Mali and Nigeria, killing hundreds of people and displacing nearly half a million others.

The three villages attacked on Sunday are located in the arid Tahoua region, abutting the Tillaberi border area, a hotspot of the conflict plaguing the western portion of the Sahel for much of the past 10 and is also fuelled by fighters linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

On March 15, fighters killed 66 people in the Tillaberi region, attacking a bus carrying shoppers from the market town of Banibangou, and then raided the village of Darey-Daye, killing inhabitants and torching grain stores. The same day, an attack claimed by ISIL in the so-called “tri-border area”, where the frontiers of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali converge, killed 33 Malian soldiers.

“After the Banibangou massacre, yesterday the terrorists, in the same barbaric way, struck the peaceful civilian populations of Intazayene and Bakorat,” Bazoum said in a Twitter post on Monday, offering “heartfelt condolences to the victims’ relatives”.

Bazoum, elected on February 21, is a former interior minister who was the preferred successor and right-hand man of the outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou.

He has pledged to fight insecurity and ordered army reinforcements to the Tillaberi region after the bloodletting of March 15.

Niger is part of a France-backed alliance of countries in the Sahel region known as the G5. A contingent of 1,200 soldiers from the Chadian army, considered the region’s toughest, has been deployed under the G5 banner.

On January 2, 100 people were killed in attacks on two villages in the Mangaize district of Tillaberi. The massacre, one of the worst in Niger’s history, occurred between two rounds of the country’s presidential election.

A year earlier, on January 9, 2020, the Niger army lost 89 men in an attack on a military camp in Chinegodar.

In December 2019, 71 Nigerien soldiers were killed in an attack in Inates in the Tillaberi region, and the following month 89 were killed in an assault on their base at Chinedogar.

AL JAZEERA NEWS

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Congo’s opposition candidate Kolelas dies a day after elections

 Kolelas died in a medical aircraft that was taking him to France for treatment, his campaign manager said.

Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, leading opposition presidential candidate in Republic of Congo’s election, died on Sunday, a day after the country went to the polls.

Kolelas was hospitalised on the eve of the elections and died of COVID-19 as he was being taken to France for treatment, his campaign director Christian Cyr Rodrigue Mayanda told AFP news agency on Monday.

Kolelas “died in the medical aircraft which came to get him from Brazzaville on Sunday afternoon”, added Mayanda.

On Saturday, a family member told the Associated Press that Kolelas was receiving treatment at a private hospital in the capital Brazzaville after contracting the coronavirus.

Kolelas skipped his final campaign event on Friday after telling some reporters a day earlier that he feared he had malaria.

A video circulating on social media dated Friday showed Kolelas, 61, wearing an oxygen mask and with a blood pressure cuff on his arm as he lay in a hospital bed.

“My dear compatriots, I am in trouble. I am fighting death,” the candidate said in a weak voice after removing his oxygen mask. “However, I ask you to stand up and vote for change. I would not have fought for nothing.”

Kolelas finished runner-up to leader Denis Sassou Nguesso in the 2016 presidential election with about 15 percent of the vote. His father, Bernard Kolelas, was briefly Congo’s prime minister in 1997 during the country’s civil war.

The opposition figure has been particularly critical of the incumbent leader in recent days, declaring that the Republic of Congo had become “a police state”.

Kolelas was seen as the main rival to Nguesso, who has lead the central African country for a total of 36 years.

Mayanda called on Kolelas’ supporters to rally at 1100 am local time (1000 GMT).

“We’ll continue to count the ballots. He was ahead in a number of areas,” he said.

Provisional election results are not expected for days, but Sassou Nguesso is widely expected to win.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Congo votes in election expected to extend Nguesso’s 36-year rule

 Vote counting is under way in the Republic of the Congo’s presidential election that could see veteran President Denis Sassou Nguesso extend his stay to almost 40 years.

More than 2.5 million voters registered to take part in Sunday’s election which Nguesso, 77, is widely expected to win against six contenders.

The election took place with the president’s main rival, former government Minister Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, in hospital, reportedly with COVID-19. Reports said Kolelas, who finished second in the 2016 election, could be evacuated to France for medical treatment.

Al Jazeera’s Malcolm Webb, reporting from the capital, Brazzaville, said authorities had imposed an internet blackout.

“The government’s information minister told us that they did the same during the last election [in 2016] because they had information about a threat of an armed insurrection. But rights groups have said it is because the government is trying to hide what it’s doing,” Webb said.

There was also a heavy presence of security forces on the streets of Brazzaville as voters went to the polls.

“Soldiers are out on the streets, the roads are closed,” Webb said. “No one is allowed to drive around. People are only allowed to move around by foot.”

Turnout appeared light in Brazzaville throughout the day. Poll workers began to count ballots shortly after voting ended at 6pm (17:00 GMT). Results are expected to be released within five days. If none of the candidates secures more than 50 percent of votes, a second round will take place 15 days later.

Webb said independent observers were blocked from monitoring the vote count, while rights activists alleged they had been targeted for criticising the electoral process.

“Today, we’ve seen many different kinds of issues that people were complaining about, including dead people on the electoral register and other people’s names completely missing,” Webb said.

Nguesso, a former paratrooper, first rose to power in 1979 and has since accumulated 36 years in office, making him one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.

He is hoping for a first-round victory to secure a fourth term running the oil-producing central African country of five million people.

“I am very satisfied because across the country, I have seen people mobilised and ready to participate in the electoral process,” Sassou said after voting, adding that he wished Kolelas a swift recovery.

The opposition candidate had posted a dramatic online video showing himself in a bed, declaring he was “battling against death” after taking off a respiratory mask.

“Rise up as one person … I’m fighting on my deathbed, you too fight for your change,” Kolelas had urged supporters, saying the election was “about the future of your children”, before replacing his mask.

In late January, the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UPADS), the country’s main opposition party, said it had decided not to field a candidate in the election, arguing conditions were not conducive for polls and that an election would only lead to more divisions in the country.

Instead, UPADS – the party of former president Pascal Lissouba – proposed a transitional period and polls in 2023, with long-serving Nguesso not on the ballot.

The Catholic Church has also raised questions about the fairness of the vote after the government rejected its request to deploy more than 1,000 election observers.

On paper, it is a democracy, since 1991. But in reality, with such behaviours, we need to question ourselves if really we are in a democracy,” Father Felicien Mavoungou told Al Jazeera.

Mavoungou was meant to be part of a team observing Sunday’s presidential election but he told Al Jazeera all church observers have been blocked from monitoring the polls.

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Local doctors angry as Kenya offers COVID vaccines to diplomats

 Kenya has offered free COVID-19 vaccines to all diplomats based there, including thousands of United Nations staff, even though it has not completed inoculating its own health workers, other front-line staff or elderly, drawing criticism from local medics.

The offer was made in a March 18 letter sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to diplomatic missions and seen by Reuters news agency.

Macharia Kamau, the foreign ministry’s principal secretary, said the shots being offered had been supplied via the World Health Organization (WHO) co-led COVAX vaccine access scheme.

Kenya, where nearly 2,000 people have died of COVID-19, is battling a third wave and the health ministry reported 28 deaths on Friday, the highest daily toll since the pandemic began.

“We need to protect everyone resident in Kenya. It just made sense not to reach out only to Kenyans but also to the international community here,” Kamau said.

Kamau said Kenyans in priority categories were still being vaccinated but the decision was in keeping with Kenya’s responsibilities as home to a large diplomatic community.

He estimated that 25,000 to 30,000 diplomats, UN staff and family members live in Nairobi. “We are the only United Nations capital headquarters in the global South. Once you have this kind of honour, it comes with a certain responsibility.”

Nairobi hosts the UN headquarters in Africa. The UN Office at Nairobi (UNON) is one of four major sites worldwide, where many UN agencies such as the children’s agency UNICEF and others have large presences.

Just more than 28,000 health workers, teachers and security personnel had received their first shots, the Ministry of Health said in a March 19 post on Twitter.

It said in early March that it would set aside 400,000 vaccines for health staff and other essential workers.

I think the government should focus on getting the priority population vaccinated and achieving vaccine acceptancy with them before opening up to diplomats,” said Elizabeth Gitau, a Kenyan physician and the chief executive officer of the Kenya Medical Association.

The health ministry referred questions to the foreign ministry. Two Nairobi-based diplomats who declined to be identified confirmed to Reuters their embassies had received the offer.

“Kenyans must be given priority,” said Chibanzi Mwachonda, head of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union.

The government note said vaccinations would begin on March 23 and only accredited diplomats and their families were eligible.

Kenya has so far only received two batches of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines – just more than one million via COVAX and a 100,000 shot donation from the Indian government.

COVAX was set up to ensure vaccines were available to high risk and vulnerable people, as well as front-line health workers, in countries unable to buy shots on the highly competitive international market.

The WHO referred Reuters to the UNON and the Kenyan government when asked for comment.

Newton Kanhema, spokesman for UNON, confirmed it had received the offer and would be taking the government up on it. He said UNON had approximately 20,000 staff and dependents, but many were children and therefore not eligible.

“Why does the Kenyan government prioritize expats – who have money and can get the vaccines through their own channels – over its own population, especially the poor?” said one of the diplomats whose embassy had received the jabs offer.

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African leaders pay tribute to Tanzania’s Magufuli

 Leaders from across Africa have paid tribute to John Magufuli, Tanzania’s late president who leaves a complex legacy following his sudden death last week.

Magufuli died aged 61 from what authorities on Wednesday said was a heart condition, after a mysterious absence of almost three weeks, and questions remain over the true cause of his death which the opposition has said was from COVID-19.

Thousands of mourners on Monday lined the streets of the capital Dodoma, running alongside the motorcade carrying Magufuli’s coffin to the Jamhuri Stadium for the state funeral. Some wept and others even collapsed, carried away by Red Cross officials, as the motorcade arrived, on the third day that Magufuli’s body has been lying in state.

Only visiting presidents and their delegations, and very few Tanzanians, wore masks at the funeral of one of the world’s foremost coronavirus-sceptics, who insisted for months that prayer had fended off the virus.

The presidents of South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Comoros and Malawi, as well as other top representatives from across the continent, attended the service.

Magufuli is hailed for his fight against corruption and massive infrastructure projects, but criticised for the stifling of democracy and crackdowns on the media, civil society and the opposition.

His legacy is also marred by his COVID-19 denialism, which saw Tanzania refuse to issue data or take any measures to curb the spread of the virus.

Tanzania’s new President Samia Suluhu Hassan told the mourners that “the country is in safe hands. We will start where Magufuli ended.”

Magufuli’s coffin is being transported to six cities to allow people to pay their last respects.

Several people were injured in a stampede on Sunday in a Dar-es-Salaam stadium, while thousands later invaded an airport in the city as his coffin was being flown to Dodoma.

His body will be taken to the archipelago of Zanzibar on Tuesday, and he will be buried in his home village of Chato in the northwest of the country on Friday.

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Boston has a new mayor in Kim Janey, who became the city’s first female and first person of color to take the office Monday.

Marty Walsh resigned Monday evening to become President Joe Biden’s labor secretary. The Boston City Council President Janey, who is Black, stepped into the role of acting mayor and is scheduled to have a ceremonial swearing in Wednesday.

Walsh, the latest in a long line of largely Irish-American Boston mayors stretching back the better part of a century — with one notable Italian-American exception — said he welcomed the change.

“History will be made tonight,” Walsh said earlier in the evening. “We’re an extremely diverse city from different backgrounds and different nationalities and different skin colors. I think it’s a good thing for our city. I think it’s a great thing for our city.”

Janey took to Twitter to wish Walsh well following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

“Congratulations on your confirmation, Secretary Walsh. You are a proud son of Dorchester who will bring our city with you,” she tweeted. “The working people of America will benefit greatly from your passion.”

“Now, we look ahead to a new day — a new chapter — in Boston’s history,” Janey, a fellow Democrat, added.

Walsh said for the past two months he’s had regular meetings and conversations with Janey. The two have also held extensive planning sessions, he said.

“Together the council president and myself and our teams have worked diligently to ensure a smooth transition,” he said.

By any typical political stopwatch, Janey’s rise has been lightning quick. She was first sworn in as a city councilor just three years ago.

Although Janey, 56, is holding the office only on an interim basis, she’s widely seen as hailing a new chapter in Boston’s political history.

Those actively seeking the office include three women of color — current city councilors Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi George. John Barros, who is of Cape Verdean descent and state Rep. Jon Santiago are also running. Barros served as chief of economic development under Walsh.

Janey has a long history of activism in Boston, with deep roots in Roxbury, the heart of the city’s Black community.

He grandfather, Daniel Benjamin Janey, was a member of Twelfth Baptist Church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worshipped while attending Boston University. Her father was one of only eight Black students to graduate from the city’s prestigious Boston Latin School in 1964.

While spending time in her great grandmother’s home in the city’s South End neighborhood, Janey was also exposed to the city’s political culture as she watched a neighbor — Black community activist and former state Rep. Mel King — launch a bid for mayor in 1983, losing to Ray Flynn, an Irish-American city councilor.

During the second phase of Boston’s tumultuous school desegregation era, Janey would recall the rocks and racial slurs she said were hurled at her as an 11-year-old girl riding the bus to the largely white neighborhood of Charlestown. She would later take part in a program that allowed her to attend school outside the city.

Janey began her career in advocacy with Massachusetts Advocates for Children, pushing for policy changes she said were aimed at ensuring equity and excellence for public school students in Boston.

In 2017, she won a 13-candidate race and became the first woman to represent her district, which includes most of Roxbury, parts of the South End, Dorchester, and Fenway areas of the city.

Although she hasn’t said yet if she’ll run for mayor in the fall, there is precedent for an interim mayor using the temporary post as a stepping stone to winning the seat outright.

When former Mayor Raymond Flynn stepped down to become President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the Vatican, then-city council president Thomas Menino stepped in as interim mayor in July 1993, won the mayoral election later that year, and ended up serving in the office longer than anyone in the city’s history.

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