Africa Business

Scientists in Zimbabwe have discovered the remains of Africa’s oldest dinosaur, which roamed the earth around 230 million years ago. 

The dinosaur, named Mbiresaurus raathi, was only about one metre (3.2 feet) tall, with a long tail, and weighed up to 30 kilograms (66 pounds), according to the international team of palaeontologists that made the discovery. 

“It ran around on two legs and had a fairly small head,” Christopher Griffin, the scientist who unearthed the first bone, told AFP on Thursday.

Probably an omnivore that ate plants, small animals and insects, the dinosaur belongs to the sauropodomorph species, the same linage that would later include giant long-necked dinosaurs, said Griffin, a 31-year-old researcher at Yale University.

The skeleton was found during two expeditions in 2017 and 2019 by a team of researchers from Zimbabwe, Zambia, and the United States. 

“I dug out the entire femur and I knew in that moment, that it was a dinosaur and I was holding Africa’s oldest known dinosaur fossil,” said Griffin, who at the time was a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech University.

His team’s findings were first published in journal Nature on Wednesday.

Dinosaurs’ remains from the same era had previously been found only in South America and India. 

The palaeontologists selected the Zimbabwe site for digging after calculating that when all continents were connected in a single land mass known as Pangea, it laid roughly at the same latitude of earlier findings in modern day South America. 

“Mbiresaurus raathi is remarkably similar to some dinosaurs of the same age found in Brazil and Argentina, reinforcing that South America and Africa were part of continuous landmass during the Late Triassic,” said Max Langer of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. 

The dinosaur is named after the Mbire district, northeast of Zimbabwe, where the skeleton was found, and palaeontologist Michael Raath, who first reported fossils in this region.

“What this (discovery) does is it broadens the range that we knew the very first dinosaurs lived in,” Griffin said.

Other specimens were discovered in the area, and all are reposited in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, in the second largest city, Bulawayo. 

“The discovery of the Mbiresaurus is an exciting and special find for Zimbabwe and the entire palaeontological field,” said museum curator Michel Zondo.

“The fact that the Mbiresaurus skeleton is almost complete, makes it a perfect reference material for further finds.”

A South African court on Thursday upheld a ban imposed on energy giant Shell from using seismic waves to explore for oil and gas off the Indian Ocean coast.

The judgement was a major victory for environmentalists who had argued the technique would affect whales and other marine life.

In a ruling seen by AFP, the high court in the southern city of Makhanda said authorisation granted in 2014 to search for oil and gas in the Transkei and Algoa areas “is reviewed and set aside.”

Last December the same court had issued an interim order prohibiting Shell from going ahead with its plans.

Civil rights organisations and civilians celebrated outside the courthouse, according to local media. 

“We live off the land and the ocean. The government tells us that oil and gas will bring job opportunities, but we know full well that it will destroy our livelihoods,” Nonhle Mbuthuma from the local environmental lobby group Amadiba said in a statement.

A Shell spokesperson told AFP they “respect the court’s decision” and would review the judgment to “determine our next steps”.

Shell did not say if it would appeal the judgment.

“We remain committed to South Africa and our role in the just energy transition,” he said.

Green Connection, one of the environmental and rights groups which had filed the case, said in a statement “civil society, traditional communities and small-scale (fishermen) have once again been vindicated by the courts”.

Shell planned to map more than 6,000 square kilometres (2,300 square miles) by bouncing sonic waves off the sea floor and using the reflection to build up a 3D image.

The area lies off South Africa’s so-called Wild Coast. The 300-kilometre (185-mile) stretch boasts rich waters housing exquisite marine life and natural reserves.

Campaigners argued that the research would have sent an “extremely” loud shockwaves every 10 seconds, 24 hours a day for five months, potentially harming migration, feeding and other routines for marine mammals and other species.

“This court victory shows that the fossil-fuel companies are required to follow the law, include all affected people in public participation processes and consider all the harms to the environment,” Pooven Moodly of Natural Justice said in a statement.

South Africa’s energy ministry had backed the scheme, and lashed those who opposed it as thwarting investment in the country’s development.

Nearly 150 oil and gas projects are underway in Africa. Greenpeace Africa’s programme chief Melita Steele expressed the hope that Thursday’s “victory will reverse the trend”.

Boko Haram jihadists have rounded up Nigerian fishermen, abducting some and killing others in Niger’s side of Lake Chad, according to a security source, a local official and fishermen in the region.

Northeast Nigeria is facing a 13-year jihadist insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million more since 2009.

The killing of the fishermen this week underscores how deeply embedded that violence has become in neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, especially in the strategic Lake Chad islands where jihadists have set up hidden bases.

Fighters rounded up dozens of fishermen from Kwatar Kaoulaha island in Diffa region on Sunday through Monday, slaughtering some and taking others hostage for disobeying a directive to leave the area, fishermen told AFP.

“Many fishermen were killed and others taken hostage by Boko Haram fighters loyal to Baakura Buduma for failing to leave the area as ordered,” fisherman Kallah Sani said, referring to a local Boko Haram faction chief.

Sani could not provide a specific toll but said those who escaped told him dozens of fishermen were on the island at the time of the attack.

Sani was among around 300 fishermen who obeyed the one-hour quit notice, leaving behind their catch and other possessions for the jihadists. 

“They told us that they would take all our possessions as booty since our government has seized their money,” he told AFP.

Boko Haram had on Friday ordered the fishermen, who were mostly from northwest Nigeria, to vacate the area and leave possessions as booty for the jihadists, said a second fisherman, Anas Ibrahim.

“They (Boko Haram) came in two speedboats and ordered us to leave the island and not to take anything but the clothes we had on us,” Ibrahim told AFP.

“The insurgents returned on Sunday and killed those they found, destroying their fishing boats to prevent them from escaping,” he said.

– Islands as shelter –

A Nigerian security source also confirmed the incident and the killings, saying militants had been upset by Niger’s arrest of their food suppliers and a money trafficker.

Niger’s government did not respond to calls seeking confirmation.

But a local Niger official from the area told AFP jihadists had ordered inhabitants to leave the islands and killed those who did not.

“I saw 11 corpses including those of fishermen and among whom there are three Nigerians and the rest are Nigeriens,” the source said.

“They say there were other deaths on the islands.”

The vast, swampy Lake Chad basin stretches across the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, and the jihadists have used its many small islands as shelter.

In 2014, Boko Haram seized islands on Lake Chad after deadly attacks, forcing fishing communities to flee their homes. Boko Haram still controls islands on the Niger side of the lake.

In 2020, the Islamic State West Africa Province group, which split from Boko Haram, seized most areas controlled by Boko Haram and allowed fishermen to return after paying royalties on their catch.

Equatorial Guinea has detained a former justice minister after he criticised the president, his brother and the opposition said Thursday, adding that they had had no news of him in three weeks.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 80, has ruled Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist for more than 43 years, making him the longest-serving non-monarchic leader in the world.

Former justice minister Ruben Maye Nsue Mangue, 59, was arrested on the night of August 7 in the eastern town of Mongomo, after being summoned there to a meeting with the ruling party, one of his brothers, Ruben Monsuy, told AFP.

After the meeting, “Ruben was arrested and taking to an unknown location after refusing to apologise to the head of state,” he said.

“We have no idea of his whereabouts.”

The ministries of information and justice did not immediately reply to a request for comment from AFP.

Five days after the arrest of the ex-minister, who is also a clergyman, the justice ministry issued an order forbidding him from preaching and accusing him of “provoking public disorder”.

On July 25, the former justice minister in a Whatsapp voice note that went viral criticised the president’s management of the country, describing him as a “demon… holding his people prisoner”, and calling for national dialogue.

A coalition of exiled opposition parties, civil society groups and human rights monitors confirmed the arrest.

Ruben Maye was justice minister from 1998 to 2004, then named ambassador to the United States in 2013.

Guillermo Nguema Ela, a Europe-based coordinator in the coalition, told AFP via telephone that the former minister had been detained “without an arrest warrant or appearing in court without 72 hours” of his detention as required by law.

Opposition politician Joaquin Elo Ayeto — who was himself held for almost a year over “defaming” the president until his release in early 2020 — said civil society was worried.

“We are sounding the alarm bell,” he said.

International rights groups regularly accuse the authorities in the former Spanish colony of human rights abuses, including of arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and torture.

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces launched a “massive” joint offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the northern region of Tigray on Thursday, the rebels said.

“The enemy, having already relocated a massive military force to Eritrea, has now begun a joint campaign with the foreign invading force of Eritrea to brutalise and exterminate the people of Tigray,” the rebels’ military command said in a statement.

AFP was not able to independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for over a year.

TPLF spokesman Kindeya Gebrehiwot told AFP the attack was coming “from Eritrea”.  

Another TPLF spokesman, Getachew Reda, described it as a four-pronged offensive. He said on Twitter that the rebels were “defending their positions” and reported “heavy shelling” from some locations.

Addis Ababa has not responded to requests for comment about the reported offensive.

Fighting between government forces and the rebels had resumed last week after a five-month lull, with clashes on the ground and air raids over Tigray dashing hopes of peacefully resolving the nearly two-year war.

Combat had been concentrated around the southeastern border of Tigray, with the rebels pushing into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, sending residents fleeing.

The government on Wednesday accused the TPLF of launching a wider “invasion” into parts of western Tigray, and other areas west of the initial clashes.

The rebels in turn alleged that the government and its neighbour Eritrea — which backed federal forces during the war’s early phase — were responsible for opening a new front.

On Thursday, the government said TPLF attacks “had further continued to intensify”.

“Innocent civilians are being killed; many are being displaced and property is being destroyed,” the Government Communication Service said in a statement.

– International alarm –

Fighting has spread since combat erupted on August 24, while the capital of the war-torn Tigray region has been hit twice by air strikes.

The first air raid on Mekele killed at least four people, including children, in a strike the UN children’s agency UNICEF said “hit a kindergarten”.

The second, around midnight on Tuesday, caused injuries and property damage, the TPLF said.

Both sides accused each other of firing first and shattering a March truce that had paused the worst of the bloodshed in northern Ethiopia.

The renewed fighting has alarmed the international community, with UN chief Antonio Guterres and senior diplomats from the European Union and the African Union among those to appeal for restraint.

Britain’s Minister for Africa, Vicky Ford, described the return to conflict as “catastrophic” for the people of Ethiopia and called on all sides to cease hostilities.

“Tigrayan forces should immediately cease fighting in Amhara region and return to Tigray,” she said in a statement on Thursday. “Eritrean forces should leave Tigray.”

In a tweet issued before the latest reported offensive, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the Ethiopian government and the TPLF “to immediately halt military operations and redouble efforts to bring a permanent end to the conflict”.

“We remain deeply concerned at the resumption of fighting and the lives that it puts at risk,” he said.

Legesse Tulu, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, responded on Twitter, saying: “The US Government needs to cease the ‘both parties’ rhetoric and denounce the destructive path of TPLF affecting various Ethiopian communities.”

– Humanitarian crisis –

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF in November 2020 in response to what he said were rebel attacks on federal army camps.

The TPLF recaptured most of Tigray in a surprise comeback in June 2021 and expanded into Afar and Amhara, before the fighting reached a stalemate.

For months at the start of the war, his government strenuously denied the involvement of Eritrean forces in the conflict, though Abiy later admitted their presence in Ethiopia and said they had withdrawn.

Although Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a brutal border war in 1998-2000 that left tens of thousands dead, Abiy initiated a rapprochement with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.

Eritrea lent Ethiopia military backing when the Tigray conflict broke out, and its troops have been implicated in multiple massacres and other atrocities during the war, allegations Asmara denies. 

Unknown numbers of civilians have died and millions are suffering from a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia, with the conflict hindering efforts to assist those in need.

The government said on Thursday that the TPLF was diverting aid supplies to its fighters.  

US aid chief Samantha Power said humanitarian workers in Tigray, Afar and Amhara were “facing unacceptable interference — including detentions, looting of fuel, and vehicle seizures”.

“USAID reiterates our call for all parties to respect humanitarian operations so that aid can reach those in need,” Power posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

Guinea’s ruling junta has told a Confederation of African Football mission that it will meet the timetable for staging the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN).

CAF has sent a team to the impoverished and volatile West African state to assess its progress for hosting the tournament.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who appointed himself president after taking power in a coup in September 2021, met with the scrutineers on Wednesday.

“They came with a message, and this message was, ‘Is 2025 feasible for us (Guineans) or not?’, Sports Minister Lansana Bea Diallo said.

The CAF team held out the possibility of postponing CAN 2025 until 2026 or 2027, he said.

“The president was straightforward — ‘We made this a national priority, and the national priority is for 2025, we won’t go for 2026 or 2027, we will organise it in 2025’,” the minister was quoted on state TV late Wednesday as saying.

“And that’s the word of the head of state which has been given today,” he said.

Hosting Africa’s biggest sporting event is a major challenge for Guinea, which suffers a chronic lack of sporting and transport infrastructure.

The country also has a long history of political turbulence. 

Last year’s coup saw the ouster of octogenarian president Alpha Conde after bloody protests over his bid for a third term in office.

The takeover has stirred frictions with the influential West African bloc ECOWAS, which has been pushing for an early return to civilian rule.

On the eve of the CAF visit, Doumbouya issued a decree declaring the 2025 competition an issue of “national and priority interest.”

All spending for organisational needs “will be processed as a matter of urgency,” and procedures will be fast-tracked to allocate land needed for the tournament.

In March, Doumbouya named a fresh organising committee after one of its members publicly doubted whether it was feasible to host the tournament in 2025.

The CAF mission appears to have been encouraged by the visit.

“Today we are really reassured by Guinea’s preparedness,” said one of its members, Benin’s Mathurin de Chacus.

Doumbouya “spoke like a soldier — he’s determined to organise CAN for the Guinean public,” he said in remarks broadcast on television.

The delegation will brief CAF on the outcome of its mission, he said.

Guinea was originally scheduled to stage CAN in 2023, but this was pushed back by two years when the list of organising nations was reshuffled in 2018.

The 2023 event will be hosted by Ivory Coast.

President Joao Lourenco faces Herculean tasks of fixing Angola’s economy and winning over its disillusioned youth as he enters his second term with decimated support, analysts say.

Lourenco’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has been in power for nearly half century, won 51.17 percent of the vote in the August 24 elections for the National Assembly.

The leader of the winning party automatically ascends to the presidency, which means Lourenco has earned a second spell at the helm.

But it was also the MPLA’s poorest showing since the first democratic vote in the former Portuguese colony in 1992. In 2017, it picked up 61 percent of the ballot.

The falloff will hike pressure on Lourenco to deliver on touted economic reforms and will reinvigorate the opposition, Augusto Santana of the non-profit Democracy Works Foundation predicted.

He could face possible street protests and dissent from within the MPLA, Santana told AFP by phone from Luanda, the capital.

“He faces quite a lot of challenges,” he said.

Lourenco, 68, came to power in 2017 when he took over from long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who bequeathed a country deep in recession and riddled by corruption and nepotism.

The former general embarked on an ambitious reform programme to tackle graft, attract foreign investors and diversify the oil-dependent economy. 

– ‘No quick fix’ –

The country eventually emerged from a five-year slump in 2021, but reforms have not translated into better living conditions for most Angolans.

Analyst Justin Pearce said that, because of the economic crisis, Lourenco’s government had so far not “been able to address the immediate demands from the poor in society”.

Now the president will be expected to deliver long-promised economic diversification away from oil.

But “there’s no quick fix,” said the Angola expert at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University.

The economic crisis, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic and a drought, has squeezed most people, pushing them into the arms of the opposition.

The leading opposition party and former rebel movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), gained 43.95 percent of the vote, up from 26.67 percent in 2017, also winning the capital, Luanda.  

Its charismatic leader Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, has proved popular in urban areas and among youth disaffected with a ruling party many think has run out of ideas.

Turnout was low, with only about 45 percent of those registered bothering to cast their ballots. 

On Tuesday, large numbers of angry onlookers heckled a motorcade of MPLA supporters celebrating the victory in Luanda — something unthinkable only a few years ago, Santana said. 

“There will be more protests, because this time people think that there’s nothing else that the MPLA can still do, that the MPLA should just go and leave space for others to try,” he said.

– Dialogue or oppression? –

UNITA is contesting the vote’s outcome, alleging discrepancies in the count, but similar attempts have failed in the past. 

Still, it will have more lawmakers, which will give the opposition more leverage in parliament.

They could also make further gains in local elections set to be held within the next two years.

Lourenco struck a conciliatory tone in his inaugural address, pledging to promote “dialogue” and pay particular attention “to the expectations of young people”. 

But resources to turn things around are limited. 

Angola is Africa’s second largest crude producer, but it has to import back fuel to cover most of its needs, having developed only limited refining capacity over the past decades.

And while the war in Ukraine has pushed up oil prices it also raised food costs, partially offsetting gains from crude sales, said Pearce.

As this should be Lourenco’s last term, Santana added, he will also have to deal with growing internal opposition, as party cadres jostling to replace him are likely to become more vocal in their criticism of his leadership.

Alex Vines, of the UK-based think tank Chatham House, said all eyes were on the president.

“Will Lourenco really have heard what the electorate is saying? Will he… try and grow the economy, reduce inequality and provide more jobs?” he asked.

“Or will there be a… posture of increased oppression and defensiveness?”

Ethiopian and Eritrean forces launched a “massive” joint offensive against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in the northern region of Tigray on Thursday, the rebels said.

“The enemy, having already relocated a massive military force to Eritrea, has now begun a joint campaign with the foreign invading force of Eritrea to brutalise and exterminate the people of Tigray,” the rebels’ military command said in a statement.

AFP was not able to independently verify the claims. Access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for over a year.

TPLF spokesman Kindeya Gebrehiwot told AFP the attack was coming “from Eritrea”.  

Another TPLF spokesman, Getachew Reda, said on Twitter that the rebels were “defending their positions” and reported “heavy shelling” from some locations.

Addis Ababa has not responded to requests for comment about the reported offensive.

Fighting between government forces and the rebels resumed last week after a five-month lull.

Clashes on the ground and air raids over Tigray have dashed hopes of peacefully resolving the nearly two-year war.

Combat had been concentrated around the southeastern border of Tigray, with the rebels pushing into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, sending residents fleeing.

The government on Wednesday accused the TPLF of launching a wider “invasion” into parts of western Tigray, and other areas west of the initial clashes.

The rebels in turn alleged that the government and its neighbour Eritrea — which backed federal forces during the war’s early phase — were responsible for opening a new front.

On Thursday, the government said TPLF attacks “had further continued to intensify”.

“Innocent civilians are being killed; many are being displaced and property is being destroyed,” the Government Communication Service said in a statement.

– International alarm –

Fighting has spread since fighting erupted over a week ago, while the capital of the war-torn Tigray region has been hit twice by air strikes.

The first air raid on Tigray’s capital Mekele killed at least four people, including children, in a strike UNICEF said “hit a kindergarten”.

The second, around midnight Tuesday, caused injuries and property damage, the TPLF said.

Both sides accused each other of firing first and shattering a March truce that had paused the worst of the bloodshed in northern Ethiopia.

The renewed fighting has alarmed the international community, with UN chief Antonio Guterres and senior diplomats from the European Union, Britain and the African Union (AU) among those to appeal for restraint.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on the Ethiopian government and the TPLF “to immediately halt military operations and redouble efforts to bring a permanent end to the conflict”.

“We remain deeply concerned at the resumption of fighting and the lives that it puts at risk,” he said on Twitter.

Legesse Tulu, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, responded on Twitter, saying: “The US Government needs to cease the ‘both parties’ rhetoric and denounce the destructive path of TPLF affecting various Ethiopian communities.”

– Humanitarian crisis –

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace laureate, sent troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF in November 2020 in response to what he said were rebel attacks on federal army camps.

For months, his government denied the involvement of Eritrean forces in the conflict, though Abiy later admitted their presence in Ethiopia.

The TPLF recaptured most of Tigray in a surprise comeback in June 2021 and expanded into Afar and Amhara, before the fighting reached a stalemate.

Unknown numbers of civilians have died and millions are suffering from a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia, with the conflict hindering efforts to assist those in need.

The government said Thursday that the TPLF was diverting aid supplies to its fighters.  

US aid chief Samantha Power said humanitarian workers in Tigray, Afar and Amhara were “facing unacceptable interference — including detentions, looting of fuel, and vehicle seizures”.

“USAID reiterates our call for all parties to respect humanitarian operations so that aid can reach those in need,” Power posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

Volodymyr is celebrating a major milestone on Wednesday — it’s his final day of taking a new treatment hailed as a turning point in the fight against drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The 25-year-old doctor in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv said he had nasty neurological side effects when he was on a previous drug regimen, which takes up to two years, involves a huge number of pills and is less than 60-percent effective. 

But the new treatment course took just six months, and gave him very few side effects. “It was very easy,” he told AFP.

A scan on Wednesday showed he was clear of tuberculosis, and he plans to start work next week after eight months off sick.

“Now I can start life again,” said Volodymyr, who did not give his last name.

Tuberculosis, once called consumption, was the world’s biggest infectious killer before the arrival of Covid-19, with 1.5 million people dying from the disease each year.

Around five percent of new cases are resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics, making them difficult to treat.

However a new drug regimen, called BPaL because it combines the antibiotics bedaquiline, pretomanid and linezolid, has been seen as a breakthrough since it was first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2019.

– From 23 to five pills a day –

Research in 2020 showed that the BPaL regimen cured more than 90 percent of drug-resistant patients, however there was a high rate of side effects linked to linezolid, including nerve pain and bone marrow suppression.

But a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday indicated that the dosage of linezolid can be halved.

A trial involving 181 participants with drug-resistant tuberculosis was carried out in Russia, South Africa, Georgia and Moldova — all countries with high TB rates.

It found that while 1,200 milligrams of linezolid over six months had a cure rate of 93 percent, that number only dropped to 91 percent if the dosage was halved to 600 milligrams.

The number of participants with the side of peripheral neuropathy — which causes nerve pain — fell from 38 to 24 percent at the lower dosage, while the rate of bone marrow suppression dropped from 22 to two percent.

The study’s lead author, Francesca Conradie of South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, said she was “overwhelmed with how successful this regimen was”.

“This is the beginning of the end of drug-resistant TB,” she told AFP.

“The quicker you treat someone’s TB, the less infectious they are — it’s like Covid in many ways.”

It is also far easier for patients to take BPaL, she added, saying previous courses could involve 23 pills a day — and up to 14,000 total pills over the maximum two-year course. 

BPaL involves five pills a day — and fewer than 750 over six months.

– Could TB surpass Covid? –

Nataliia Lytvynenko, who has overseen BPaL treatments in Ukraine, said the more manageable amount of pills meant it was easier for patients to continue treatment after being displaced by the war in her country.

The World Health Organization indicated earlier this year that it would soon update its guidelines to recommend most patients with drug-resistant TB use BPaL with 600 milligrams of linezolid.

Two experts not involved in Wednesday’s study said the research and the WHO guidance were “major advances”.

The BPaL treatment “is one of the defining achievements of the tuberculosis research community in this century,” Guy Thwaites of Britain’s Oxford University and Nguyen Viet Nhung of Vietnam’s National Tuberculosis Control Programme wrote in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The advances come amid warnings that the pandemic has stalled progress against tuberculosis.

“I very much worry that TB will — whether it’s this year or next — again become the largest single killer of any infectious disease in the world,” said Mel Spigelman, the president of the non-profit TB Alliance which funded the research.

Volodymyr meanwhile said he hoped that progress would continue so the treatment timeline gets even shorter.

“Maybe it will be two months — or even one,” he said with a smile.

At least 50 civilians were killed and hundreds arrested in central Mali in April during an operation by the army and “foreign” personnel, the UN’s peacekeeping mission said Wednesday.

There was no immediate response from Mali’s authorities to the allegations, just the latest against Malian soldiers now backed by Russia in their battle against jihadists.

The incident happened on April 19 when Malian troops “accompanied by foreign military personnel” carried out a sweep in Hombori after one of their convoys was attacked by a roadside bomb, MINUSMA said.

“At least 50 civilians (including a woman and a child) were killed and more than 500 others arrested,” it said in a quarterly report on violence and rights abuses.

The report did not specify who the foreign fighters were.

But several sources at the time said a “Russian advisor” deployed with the Malian forces had been killed in the roadside blast.

Mali’s ruling junta, which has been in power since 2020, has brought in Russian operatives it describes as military trainers.

Western countries describe them as mercenaries from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group. 

Their presence was a key factor in France’s decision to withdraw its troops from Mali — a former colony it has supported in a decade-long fight against a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.

The last French soldier in Mali under the long-running Barkhane anti-jihadist mission left the country on August 15.

The Malian army on April 22 said it had conducted a major security sweep in the Hombori area after the attack three days earlier. It said it had killed 18 “attackers” and detained 611 people.

Most were freed, but among a few dozen kept in detention, two died from torture, MINUSMA said.

On April 24, a soldier appeared to have “summarily killed” 20 other detainees at the Malian army camp in Hombori, the peacekeeping force said.

– Drone footage –

The allegations come after France on April 19 left the Gossi military base, which lies northeast of Hombori, and handed it back to the Malian authorities.

Two days later, drone footage began circulating on social media, showing what appeared to be Caucasian soldiers covering bodies with sand near the Gossi base.

The French army said it had filmed Russian mercenaries burying bodies near the base to falsely accuse France’s departing forces of leaving behind mass graves.

MINUSMA said it had opened an inquiry.

It said the bodies buried in Gossi had been brought there on April 20, the day after the French withdrew, and had come from Hombori.

The MINUSMA report said 96 civilians lost their lives during operations by Malian security forces in the three months between April 1 and June 30, while seven disappeared and 19 were injured.

A report by experts for the United Nations, seen by AFP in early August, said “white-skinned soldiers” accompanied Malian troops at the scene of killings in March in the Segou region near the Mauritanian border, in which 33 civilians died.

In April, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said about 300 people, most of them ethnic Fulanis, were killed in Moura in central Mali in March by Malian forces “or associated foreign fighters” — a veiled reference to suspected Russian operatives.

Mali’s army says that it killed 203 militants at Moura.