Gunmen kidnap 73 students in Nigeria

ZAMFARA, Nigeria

Gunmen abducted 73 students in yet another school attack in north-western Nigeria on Wednesday, police said, prompting authorities to close all primary and secondary schools across Zamfara state.

The new kidnappings came just days after three other groups of hostages were freed when large ransom payments were reportedly made, raising hopes that other captives might soon be freed, too.

Attackers descended upon the Government Day Secondary School in the remote village of Kaya around noon Wednesday, local resident Yusuf Mohammed told The Associated Press. The kidnappers then began shooting into the air before taking the students, he said.

Zamfara state police spokesman Mohammed Shehu said an operation was underway to rescue the students.

More than 1,000 students have been kidnapped from schools in northern Nigeria since December. While most pupils ultimately have been released, some have died or been killed in captivity and about 200 remained hostages before Wednesday's attack, according to UNICEF.

Government officials haven't commented on whether they played any role in the hostage releases announced Friday, but it appears parents from at least one of those schools did pay a large ransom.

The head teacher at one of the schools in Niger state told AP that many parents sold most of what they owned in an effort to raise funds totaling more than 30 million naira (about $72,900). The Salihu Tanko Islamiya School also sold off a piece of land where they had planned an expansion project, he added.

Those 90 pupils freed were the youngest hostages ever taken from a school in Nigeria, with children as young as 4 taken into the remote forests by gunmen and held for three months without their parents. One child, who hasn't been identified, died during the ordeal, authorities said last week.

It remains unclear whether the kidnappers of the three separate hostage groups last week are connected or if the simultaneous releases were merely coincidental. Each took place in a different state and they involved students of varying ages.

Authorities so far have blamed this year's spate of kidnappings on “bandits,” or criminals operating out of remote, forested areas of northern Nigeria. Most of the gunmen are believed to be young men from the Fulani ethnic group who had traditionally worked as nomadic cattle herders before turning to the profitable crime of abducting children for ransom.

Some fear the gunmen in the northwest are linked in some way to the Islamic militants long active in the northeast, who drew international condemnation in 2014 when they abducted 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014, prompting the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

More than 100 of those girls are still missing, though two recently turned up years later, both of whom had had children with the militants they were forced to marry.

WHO launches hub in Berlin to help prevent future pandemics

BERLIN, Germany

The World Health Organization on Wednesday inaugurated a new “hub” in Berlin that aims to help prepare the globe better to prevent future pandemics.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, right, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, attend the inauguration ceremony of the 'WHO Hub For Pandemic And Epidemic Intelligence' at the Langenbeck-Virchow building in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and German Chancellor Angela Merkel cut the ribbon to launch the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. WHO says Germany is making an initial investment of $100 million in the facility.

The hub is meant to promote more effective data collection, information-sharing and analysis, leading to better and more coherent decision-making after the patchy global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be headed by Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, currently the director-general of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control.

The COVID-19 pandemic “has taught the world many painful lessons,” Tedros said. “One of the clearest is the need for new, powerful systems and tools for global surveillance to collect, analyze and disseminate data on outbreaks with the potential to become epidemics and pandemics.”

“Viruses move fast but data can move even faster,” Tedros said. He added that the new center is one response to recommendations on what can be done to keep the world safer in the future, “filling a gap in the world's defenses.”

Merkel emphasized that the information gathered by the new hub “should be shared with all countries.” She added that “the COVID pandemic has shown how much we can achieve when we really combine our strengths.”

Still, her health minister, Jens Spahn, pointed to tensions that have emerged in the pandemic, calling at the launch for “China to finally become fully cooperative and to make the examination of the origin of the ... virus transparent to the international community."

Pressure has been mounting in the West — and from WHO’s own team that traveled to China earlier this year — for Beijing to do more to grant access to data about early COVID-19 cases, which could help clear up the ongoing mystery about how the pandemic first erupted.

China has responded to continuing speculation about a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology by suggesting the virus could have escaped from Fort Detrick, a U.S. military lab in Maryland.

Spahn and Tedros suggested that a new “pandemic treaty” that the European Union has been championing could have teeth, such as penalties for signatory countries that don’t comply with it.

The German minister acknowledged “that is not an easy debate, but I think it is a necessary debate.” Tedros said that “maybe exploring the sanctions may be important.” - AP

Pfizer launch new trials of oral COVID-19 drugs

NEW YORK, USA

Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co Inc announced on Wednesday new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19 as the race to develop an easy-to-administer treatment for the potentially fatal illness heats up.

Pfizer said its latest mid-to-late-stage trial will enroll 1,140 non-hospitalized adults diagnosed with coronavirus infection who are not at risk of severe illness. Patients in the trial will be given Pfizer's pill, known as PF-07321332, and a low dose of ritonavir, an older medication widely used in combination treatments for HIV infection.

Pfizer's drug is designed to block the activity of a key enzyme that is needed for the coronavirus to multiply.

Merck said its new trial will study experimental drug molnupiravir for the prevention of COVID-19 among adults in the same household as someone diagnosed with symptomatic coronavirus infection.

Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics are already conducting a late-stage trial of the treatment in non-hospitalized patients to see if it reduces the risk of hospitalization or death.

Molnupiravir is a type of antiviral designed to introduce errors into the RNA of the virus that eventually prevent it from replicating.

Pfizer began in July a different trial of PF-07321332 in adults with COVID-19 infection who are at high risk of becoming severely ill due to underlying health conditions such as diabetes. The company said it expects initial results from that study sometime this fall.

Rivals Pfizer and Merck, along with Swiss pharmaceutical Roche Holding AG, have made the most progress in developing what would be the first antiviral pill to treat, or possibly prevent, COVID-19.

To date, Gilead Sciences Inc's intravenous drug Veklury, known generically as remdesivir, is the only approved antiviral treatment for COVID-19 in the United States.

Roche and partner Atea Pharmaceuticals in June said early data from a trial of their experimental oral antiviral AT-527 showed that it lowered viral load in hospitalized patients.

Merck said in June that the U.S. government agreed to pay about $1.2 billion for 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir, if it is proven to work and authorized by regulators. The company said it expected to file for U.S. emergency use authorization of molnupiravir in the second half of 2021 at the earliest.

Pfizer said in July if the PF-07321332 trial was successful, it would file for a potential emergency use authorization in the fourth quarter.

Three people beheaded in northern Mozambique

MAPUTO, Mozambique 

Three people have been beheaded in a village in Quissanga district in the jihadist-hit northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

The macabre act is believed to be the work of insurgents linked to the Islamic State group fleeing the ongoing joint operations by Mozambican and Rwandan troops.

The incident occurred on Tuesday but the reasons behind the killings are still unknown, according to media reports.

The three dismembered bodies are said to have been found by villagers in the morning. They also reported seeing a vehicle without a number plate moving around.

Last week three fishermen were reportedly beheaded in Macomia district, which was also suspected to have been carried out by fleeing jihadists.

The incident was reported by other fishermen who survived the attack.

The beheadings come at a time when a sense of calm and security seems to be returning to many districts in Cabo Delgado as a result of the military operations.

The jihadists have been blamed for several mass beheadings since they began their insurgency in 2017.

Experimental HIV vaccine fails in Africa

WASHINGTON, USA

Johnson & Johnson's highly anticipated HIV vaccine failed to demonstrate adequate protection in a clinical trial involving more than 2,600 young women in sub-Saharan Africa, the company and US health authorities said Tuesday.

Though the vaccine was found to be safe, with no serious side effects, its efficacy in preventing HIV infection was just over 25 percent.

As a result, the "Imbokodo" trial that began in 2017 will now be halted, and the participants, from Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will be told whether they received the vaccine or placebo. 

But the company will continue a parallel trial involving men who have sex with men and transgender individuals that is taking place in the Americas and Europe, where vaccine composition differs and so do the prevalent HIV strains.

In a statement, Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of J&J thanked the women who participated and the company's partners. 

"While we are disappointed that the vaccine candidate did not provide a sufficient level of protection against HIV infection in the Imbokodo trial, the study will give us important scientific findings in the ongoing pursuit for a vaccine to prevent HIV," he said.

"We must apply the knowledge learned from the Imbokodo trial and continue our efforts to find a vaccine that will be protective against HIV," added Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases which co-funded the study.

The J&J vaccine uses similar adenovirus technology to its Covid-19 vaccine, and was delivered with four vaccinations over a year.

A genetically modified cold virus delivers genetic cargo carrying instructions for the host to develop "mosaic immunogens" -- molecules capable of inducing an immune response to a wide variety of HIV strains.

The last two doses also contained proteins that are found on the HIV virus itself, as well as a substance called an "adjuvant" that is meant to further spur the immune system.

The trial was analysed two years after the women, who were aged 18-35, received their first dose.

Researchers found that 63 participants who received the placebo and 51 who received the vaccine became infected with HIV, meaning the efficacy was 25.2 percent.

The participants were offered pre-exposure prophylaxis medication (PrEP) to help prevent HIV infection during the clinical trial.

The women who acquired HIV infection were directed to medical care and offered antiretroviral treatment. 

In the four decades since the first cases of what would come to be known as AIDS were documented, scientists have made huge strides in HIV treatment, transforming what was once a death sentence to a manageable condition.

Oral PreP, when taken every day, reduces the risk of infection by 99 percent.

But because access to medication remains unequal across the world and even within wealthy countries, a vaccine that would train the human system to ward off infection remains a high priority.

This month, a trial of two vaccines by Moderna based on the same mRNA technology behind the company's Covid vaccine was posted on a government website, with recruitment to begin September 19.

HIV is especially hard to produce a vaccine against, as there are hundreds or thousands of variants inside each infected person.

It is also a "retrovirus" meaning it quickly incorporates itself into its host's DNA, becoming an irreversible infection.  

Taliban government launches 'house to house' execution following U.S exit

KABUL, Afghanistan

The Taliban are reportedly carrying out ‘house-to-house executions’ after terrifying new audio of gunshots raging across Kabul emerged.

An Afghan man who worked with the US revealed the frightening audio which he said showed the sounds of gunfire ‘from everywhere.’  He claimed it also showed a ‘conflict between the Taliban.’

It comes amid reports that the new rulers of Afghanistan are conducting executions across Kabul since the US departure and the evacuation effort ended.

The last military aircraft left Hamid Karzai International airport at about midnight on August 31 local time with one official saying: “Final plane is wheels up. War is over.”

According to Fox News militants have since been carrying out “house-to-house executions in Kabul” following the departure, says a senior US source.

An Afghan man who worked with Americans on the ground gave a chilling piece of audio to the publication that contained the sounds of distant gunshots.

The man said in the clip, recorded about the time the final US plane left: “I think there’s a conflict between the Taliban, I have no idea where I’m located.

“From everywhere I hear the sounds of shooting, gunfire. I have no idea how to leave.”

In another development, the Taliban have been celebrating the US departure with gunfire as the troops left, with the group promising “full independence” for the country.

AFP news agency quoted the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid as saying: “Congratulations to Afghanistan… this victory belongs to us all.

“We want to have good relations with the US and the world. We welcome good diplomatic relations with them all,” he added.

Kenya's Deputy President is guarded by 257 bodyguards - Government

By Benjamin Muiruki, NAIROBI Kenya

Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary, Fred Matiangi has refuted claims that the security of Deputy President William Ruto has been withdrawn or downgraded.

Appearing before the National Assembly Security Committee on Wednesday, Matiang’i firmly stated that compared to all previous vice presidents and even former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, DP Ruto is the most guarded in Kenya’s history.

In an elaborate breakdown of the DP’s security formation, Matiang’i told the committee that Ruto has a total of 257 officers deployed to guard him as well as secure his residences and properties.

“Contrary to the allegations made and in view of the tabled evidence (annex land 2), H.E. the Deputy President is the most guarded in the history of the country in comparison with previous equivalent office holders,” said Matiang’i.

He went ahead to present a three-layer structure of Ruto’s security team comprising officers from the Presidential Escort Unit and various police units including GSU, DCI and Administration Police.

On the first layer is a total of 85 officers among them 74 officers from the elite Presidential Escort Unit, 5 General Service Unit officers and 6 DCI officers. The 85 officers, according to Matiang’i, are mandated to provide a 24-hour protection of the DP and are under the command of a Commissioner of Police.

Further, there are another 121 officers, who make up the second layer and they include officers from the Administration Police Unit and Prison department. They provide a 24-hour mobile patrol within the DP’s residences.

The third layer is known as the auxiliary security and these are security personnel deployed to secure various properties owned by the deputy president.

Matiang’i told the committee that there are at least 51 officers from various police units manning various properties of Deputy President William Ruto.

In comparison to previous holders of the office being held by Ruto, Matiang’i demonstrated that all previous vice presidents had only 14 officers from the Presidential Escort Unit assigned to them yet Ruto has 74.

For the officers guarding residences of previous vice presidents, all of Ruto’s predecessors had between eight to 16 officers assigned to them while Ruto has 183.

Matiang’i said Jaramogi Odinga, Kenya’s first VP, had a total of 30 officers, Joseph Murumbi 22, Daniel Moi 34, Mwai Kibaki 26, Josephat Karanja 22, George Saitoti 30, Musalia Mudavadi 22, Michael Wamalwa 22, Moody Awori 22, and Kalonzo Musyoka 26. He added that when ODM leader Raila Odinga was Prime Minister he had 57 officers guarding him and his residences.

The Interior CS maintains that the National Police Service only conducted a reassignment of duty as far as Ruto’s security is concerned.

Tanzania opposition chief in court to face '$260 support to terrorism' charges

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania

Freeman Mbowe, leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party, has appeared in court to face “terrorism” charges, in a case denounced by his supporters as a politically motivated move aimed at crushing dissent.

Freeman Mbowe has been behind bars since July 21 when he was arrested along with other senior Chadema officials

The 59-year-old chairman of the Chadema party has been behind bars since July 21 when he was arrested along with other senior party officials in a night-time police raid just hours before they were to hold a public forum to demand constitutional reforms.

The trial at the country’s high court in Dar-es-Salaam opened on Tuesday under tight security, with most journalists banned from the courtroom by police.

President Samia Hassan’s government, citing COVID-19 regulations and security, had warned foreign diplomats against turning up to the court to follow the case without notifying the foreign ministry.

Representatives from the British and US embassies were present at the hearing, which was also attended by Chadema’s senior leaders.

On Monday, Mbowe had appeared in court to pursue a case against top legal officials, claiming his constitutional rights had been violated during his arrest and when he was charged.

The opposition has denounced the arrests as a throwback to the oppressive rule of Tanzania’s late leader John Magufuli who died suddenly in March.

There had been hope Hassan would bring about a new era of democracy after the increasingly heavy-handed rule of Magufuli but Chadema leaders say the arrests of Mbowe and his colleagues reflect a deepening slide into “dictatorship”.

They have accused the government of meddling in the case and want the court to dismiss the charges.

The government denies the allegations.

Earlier this month, rights group Amnesty International asked the government to “substantiate charges” against Mbowe or release him.

“His arrest and continued detention appears to be a tactic to silence critical voices as part of a growing crackdown against the political opposition,” Amnesty said in a Twitter post.

Prosecutors say the allegations against Mbowe do not relate to the constitutional reform conference Chadema had planned to hold in the port city of Mwanza in July but rather to alleged offences last year in another part of Tanzania.

Chadema has said prosecutors accuse Mbowe of conspiring to attack a public official, and giving 600,000 Tanzanian shillings ($260) towards blowing up petrol stations and public gatherings and cutting down trees to block roads.

Major oil producers set to uphold small output increase

By Benoît PELEGRIN, VIENNA Austria

The world’s leading oil producers are expected to uphold a July deal to slowly boost output at a meeting on Wednesday, despite US pressure to go further.

OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia along with allies including Russia, known collectively as OPEC+, decided in July to raise output by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) each month from August, in a deal thrashed out after weeks of wrangling.

The move is aimed at supporting a global economic recovery, which has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic — a crisis that sent oil demand plummeting last year.

But US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last month that the production boost agreed in July was “simply not enough” to fuel a global recovery.

However, analysts said Wednesday afternoon’s videoconference between the 23 OPEC+ partners was likely to uphold the July decision.

“It would be a surprise if they do anything (else) at the moment, despite pressure from the White House, given current price levels, demand and uncertain outlook,” said Craig Erlam, a market analyst from trading firm Oanda.

Helima Croft of RBC Capital Markets also said “staying the course is the most likely outcome” though “some members have expressed concern about the fragility of demand, most notably Kuwait”.

Kuwait Oil Minister Mohammed Al-Fares was quoted by the official Kuna agency as saying on Sunday that “all options” were still on the table. “No decision has been taken,” he said.

And Croft warned against “the perils of predicting” the outcomes of such meetings.

In a rare challenge to OPEC leader Saudi Arabia in July, the United Arab Emirates only agreed to the deal after a compromise was reached to adjust its output quotas next May, together with several other countries, meaning their actual cuts will be less.

Since May this year, OPEC+ members have raised oil output bit by bit with the aim of eventually returning to pre-pandemic production levels, after slashing them more than a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic crushed demand.

The grouping will “assess market developments” in December, OPEC said in July. It also agreed to extend a deadline on capping output from April next year to the end of 2022.

Oil prices — which had already been sliding owing to concerns about the global economy — plummeted in April 2020 as coronavirus spread around the world and hit global consumption, transport and supply chains.

OPEC+ then decided to withdraw 9.7 million bpd from the market and to gradually restore supplies.

Benchmark oil prices rebounded as a result to reach two-and-a-half-year highs.

The main international oil contracts have been trading around $70 per barrel.

But the market remains nervous with Covid infections and the Delta strain on the rise and governments mulling future lockdowns.

WHO monitoring new coronavirus variant named 'Mu'

GENEVA, Switzerland

The World Health Organization has said it is monitoring a new coronavirus variant known as “Mu”, which was first identified in Colombia in January.

The 'Mu' coronavirus variant, first identified in Colombia, has mutations indicating a risk of vaccine resistance, the WHO says

Mu, known scientifically as B.1.621, has been classified as a “variant of interest”, the global health body said Tuesday in its weekly pandemic bulletin.

The WHO said the variant has mutations that indicate a risk of resistance to vaccines and stressed that further studies were needed to better understand it.

“The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” the bulletin said.

There is widespread concern over the emergence of new virus mutations as infection rates are ticking up globally again, with the highly transmissible Delta variant taking hold — especially among the unvaccinated — and in regions where anti-virus measures have been relaxed.

All viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 that causes Covid-19, mutate over time and most mutations have little or no effect on the properties of the virus.

But certain mutations can impact the properties of a virus and influence how easily it spreads, the severity of the disease it causes, and its resistance to vaccines, drugs and other countermeasures.

The WHO currently identifies four Covid-19 variants of concern, including Alpha, which is present in 193 countries, and Delta, present in 170 countries.

Five variants, including Mu, are to be monitored.

After being detected in Colombia, Mu has since been reported in other South American countries and in Europe.

The WHO said its global prevalence has declined to below 0.1 percent among sequenced cases. In Colombia, however, it is at 39 percent.

Biden defends US pullout from Afghanistan as Taliban celebrate

WASHINGTON, USA

United States President, Joe Biden on Tuesday mounted a fierce defense of his exit from Afghanistan as the "best decision for America," the day after the US military withdrawal celebrated by the Taliban as a major victory.

US soldiers board an US Air Force aircraft at the airport in Kabul on August 30, 2021.

"This is the right decision. A wise decision. And the best decision for America," Biden said in an address to the nation in Washington, after he stuck to an August 31 deadline to end two decades of bloodshed that began and ended with the hardline Islamists in power. 

He spoke after the United Nations warned of a looming "humanitarian catastrophe" in Afghanistan, underscoring the daunting challenges that the victorious Taliban face as they transform from insurgent group to governing power.

For America, Biden argued, the only choice in Afghanistan was "leaving or escalating."

And the president, whose critics have savaged him for his handling of the withdrawal, said the frenzied airlift -- which saw the United States and its allies fly more than 120,000 people fleeing the new Taliban regime out of Afghanistan -- was an "extraordinary success."

"No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history; only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it," he said.

The Taliban also saw the airlift as a success: a mark of their astonishing comeback and defeat of a global superpower.

Taliban fighters fired weapons into the sky in Kabul in the early hours of Tuesday in jubilation after the last US plane flew out. Later, they swept into the capital's vast airport.

"Congratulations to Afghanistan... this victory belongs to us all," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters hours later on the airport runway.

Badri 313 unit special force paraded the Taliban flag at Kabul airport the morning after the last US troops left.

Mujahid said the Taliban's victory was a "lesson for other invaders".

In Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the movement and the country's second-largest city, thousands of celebrating supporters swept onto the streets.

All eyes will now turn to how the Taliban handle their first few days with sole authority over the country, with a sharp focus on whether they will allow free departure for those wanting to leave -- including some foreigners.

The US has said that "under 200" of its citizens remained in the country, and Britain said the number of UK nationals inside was in the "low hundreds."

Thousands of Afghans who worked with the US-backed government over the years and fear retribution also want to get out.

Talks are ongoing as to who will now run Kabul airport, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned was of "existential importance" as a lifeline for aid.

Many Afghans are terrified of a repeat of the Taliban's initial rule from 1996-2001, which was infamous for their treatment of women and girls, as well as a brutal justice system.

The group has repeatedly promised a more tolerant brand of governance compared with their first stint in power, and Mujahid persisted with that theme.

"We want to have good relations with the US and the world. We welcome good diplomatic relations with them all," he said.

Mujahid also insisted Taliban security forces would be "gentle and nice".

But UN chief Antonio Guterres gave a stark assessment of the challenges they face as they build their new regime.

He expressed his "grave concern at the deepening humanitarian and economic crisis in the country," adding that basic services threatened to collapse "completely."

He pleaded for financial support from the international community for the war-ravaged country, which is dependent on foreign aid.

"I urge all member states to dig deep for the people of Afghanistan in their darkest hour of need," Guterres said in a statement.

Authorities from several countries have already begun meeting with Taliban leadership, the latest being India.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, urged the Taliban to combat terrorism after the US withdrawal, and called for an inclusive government.

Some Afghans also appealed to the Islamist movement to keep its promise of a softer rule.

Fawzia Koofi, a rights activist and former negotiator for the ousted government who has twice survived assassination attempts, called on the Taliban via Twitter to include all Afghans as they turn to ruling.

"Taliban, hear us out: we must rebuild together!" she wrote. "This land belongs to all of us."

Other activists struggled to find hope.

"If I let my thoughts linger on what we have lost, I will lose my mind," Muska Dastageer, who lectured at the American University of Afghanistan, said on Twitter.

The US-led airlift began as the Taliban completed an astonishing rout of government forces around the country and took over the capital on August 15.

The withdrawal came just before the August 31 deadline set by Biden to end the war which began with the US invasion in the wake of 9/11 -- a conflict that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Afghans and more than 2,400 American service members.

The slightly early finish came amid a threat from the regional offshoot of the Islamic State group, rivals of the Taliban, to attack US forces at the Kabul airport.

Thirteen US troops were among more than 100 people killed late last week when an IS suicide bomber attacked the perimeter of the airport, where desperate Afghans had massed in the hope of boarding an evacuation flight.

Biden said Tuesday that the United States would continue the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries, and warned IS: "We are not done with you yet." - AFP