Liberia teenage taxi rider praised for returning cash

A Liberian teenage motorcycle taxi rider has become a national hero after he found and returned $50,000 (£37,000) that had gone missing from a prominent businesswoman in north-eastern Nimba County on the border with Ivory Coast.

The young man, Emmanuel Tolue, saw the money wrapped in a plastic bag on a highway and heard the owner, Musu Yancy, desperately making a radio appeal to anyone coming across the cash.

He then let her know he had found it in the presence of local officials.

Ms Yancy told the BBC she and her boss have rewarded the cyclist with $1,500 (£1,100) and other gifts.

She was so happy and relieved about getting the money back she has almost lost her voice thanking God.

As people sing the praise of the motorcyclist, well-wishers have been pouring into the home of the lady in the town of Tappita in celebration.

Such gestures are exceptionally unusual in post-war Liberia.

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Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock given United Nations role

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been given a role with the United Nations as a special representative.

Writing on Twitter, the ex-minister said the job would focus on helping Africa’s economy recover from Covid.

It comes four months after Mr Hancock resigned from his cabinet post for breaking social distancing guidelines by kissing a colleague.

The Under Secretary General of the UN, Vera Songwe, praised his “success” in tackling the UK’s pandemic response.

In a letter posted online by Mr Hancock, Ms Songwe said the “acceleration of vaccines that has led the UK move faster towards economic recovery is one testament to the strengths that you will bring to this role, together with your fiscal and monetary experience”.

The announcement also comes on the day a report from MPs was published, claiming the government and its scientists’ failure to do more to stop Covid spreading early in the pandemic was one of the country’s worst public health failures.

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Mr Hancock’s official title will be “UN special representative on financial innovation and climate change for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa”.

The Conservative MP said he was “honoured” to be appointed and would help “promote sustainable development”, alongside working on the economic recovery.

Ms Songwe said the UN had been working with people across the world on Africa’s climate actions and resilient recovery – and that she wanted to appoint Mr Hancock “given your global leadership, advocacy reach and in depth understanding of government processes through your various ministerial cabinet roles”.

She added: “The role will support Africa’s cause at the global level and ensure the continent builds forward better, leveraging financial innovations and working with major stakeholders like the G20, UK government and COP26.”

In his acceptance letter, which he also posted on Twitter, Mr Hancock wrote: “As we recover from the pandemic so we must take this moment to ensure Africa can prosper.”

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, said it was a “fascinating and important appointment”.

He added: “Boosting the economies of Africa is one of the most essential tasks of this generation.”

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Humans used tobacco 12,300 years ago, new discovery suggests

Four charred tobacco plant seeds found in an ancient Utah fireplace suggest early Americans may have been using the plant 12,300 years ago.

The finding makes the first known use of tobacco some 9,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Researchers believe hunter-gatherers in the Great Salt Lake Desert may have sucked or smoked wads of the plant.

Until now, the earliest evidence of tobacco use was a 3,300-year-old smoking pipe discovered in Alabama.

Archaeologists discovered the millimetre-wide seeds at the Wishbone site, an ancient camp in the desert in what is now northern Utah.

There, they found the remnants of an ancient hearth that was surrounded by bone and stone artefacts. These included duck bones, stone tools, and a spear-tip bearing the remains of blood from a mammoth or an early form of elephant.

IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS

Image caption,The charred remains of one of the tobacco plant seeds

Their findings suggest the native American hunter-gatherers may have consumed the tobacco while cooking or toolmaking, the scientists say in a paper published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

The tobacco plant is native to the Americas and contains the psychoactive addictive substance nicotine.

Tobacco was widely cultivated and dispersed around the world following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas at the end of the 15th Century.

“The tobacco seeds were the big surprise. They are incredibly small and rare to be preserved,” Daron Duke of the Far Western Anthropological Research Group told the New Scientist.

“This suggests that people learned the intoxicant properties of tobacco relatively early in their time here rather than only with domestication and agriculture thousands of years later.”

Today, the Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake. But 12,300 years ago, the camp would have been on a vast marshland.

“We know very little about their culture,” Mr Duke said of the hunter-gatherers. “The thing that intrigues me the most about this find is the social window it gives to a simple activity in an undocumented past. My imagination runs wild.”

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Iraq election: Nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr claims victory

Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has claimed victory for his nationalist Saeroun movement in Iraq’s election.

Mr Sadr, who wants to end US and Iranian influence over Iraq’s internal affairs, promised to form a government free from foreign interference.

Partial results showed Saeroun winning 73 of the 329 seats in parliament and Sunni Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi’s Taqaddum coalition second with 38.

The pro-Iranian Fatah alliance suffered a surprise setback, getting only 14.

It is likely to take many weeks of negotiations to build a new governing coalition, which Mr Sadr cannot lead because he did not stand as a candidate.

But the record low official turnout of 41% suggests many Iraqis do not believe that there will be any real change to the power-sharing system, based on sectarian and ethnic identity, that has allowed a narrow elite to keep a firm grip on power since the US-led invasion in 2003.

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Sunday’s election was the first since mass protests over government corruption, high unemployment and dire public services erupted in 2019.

The poll had been due next year but was brought forward by six months in response to the unrest, during which more than 550 demonstrators were killed by security forces and gunmen suspected of links to powerful Iran-backed Shia militias in the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation force.

The old electoral system was also replaced with one meant to make it easier for independent candidates to challenge established parties.

Initial results released on Monday night showed that Saeroun won 19 more seats than it did in the last election in 2018, the state-owned Iraq News Agency (INA) reported.

Mr Sadr hailed the results as a victory for reform and for Iraq.

“It is the day of the victory of reform over corruption. The day of the people’s victory over occupation, normalisation, militias, poverty, injustice and enslavement,” he said in a televised speech.

“It is a day when sectarianism, ethnicity and partisanship were defeated. It is the day of Iraq and we are the servants of the Iraqi people.”

The cleric warned foreign powers that all embassies would be welcomed “as long as they do not interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs and the formation of the government”, and that any intervention would be “met with a diplomatic or even a popular response”.

IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS

Image caption,Moqtada al-Sadr cannot serve as prime minister because he did not stand in the election

Mr Sadr, 47, is one of the best-known and most powerful figures in Iraq.

A son of the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, he shot to prominence after the 2003 invasion as a vocal opponent of the foreign occupation and the head of a militia that repeatedly clashed with US forces.

In recent years, he has recast himself as an anti-corruption campaigner and also distanced himself from Iran, vowing that he would “not leave Iraq in its grip”.

He has also criticised the Iran-backed militias, which have developed significant political and economic power since helping the Iraqi government defeat the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State in 2017.

Fatah leader Hadi al-Ameri, a militia commander with close ties to the hard-line leadership in Tehran, rejected the election results.

“We will not accept these fabricated results, whatever the price, and we will defend the votes of our candidates and voters with full force,” he was quoted as saying by Al-Sumaria TV on Tuesday.

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