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Africa
Hard Numbers: Sudan world’s worst crisis, NYC shutters shelters, Haiti reels after massacre, FIFA awards Saudi the Cup
People gather next to covered bodies, following shelling by the Rapid Support Forces, in Omdurman, Sudan, December 10, 2024.
25: New York Citywill close 25 asylum shelters in two months, including one housing 2,000 people, as Mayor Eric Adams seeks to align the Big Apple’s immigration priorities with those of the incoming Trump administration. The closures, which will save NYC $2.3 billion, will see the number of asylum-seekers in city shelters drop to their lowest level in 17 months – a policy that’s being severely criticized by refugee advocates.
180: Over 180 people were massacred last weekend in Haiti's Cité Soleil after gang leader Micanor Altès blamed Voodoo adherents for the illness and death of his son. Micanor shot and killed at least 60 elderly individuals and, together with gang members, killed at least 50 more with machetes and knives, “who, in [Micanor’s] imagination, would be capable of casting a bad spell on his son,” according to local authorities. Haiti’s government has promised to hunt down the perpetrators of the massacre.
300: FIFA on Wednesday confirmed Saudi Arabia as the sole host for the 2034 World Cup, sparking accusations of “sportswashing.” Through its Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabiahas spent billions on international sports in recent years, including golf, boxing, esports, and Formula One. Critics argue FIFA is prioritizing financial and political goals over human rights, ignoring the fact that a record 300 people have been executed in the Kingdom this year.Election dispute ignites military confrontation in Somalia’s Jubbaland
Jubbaland forces carry their ammunitions during a security patrol against Islamist al Shabaab militants in Bulagaduud town, north of Kismayu, Somalia.
What happened? When Jubbaland ignored the federal government’s opposition to the election, Mogadishu issued an arrest warrant for Madobe, and Jubbaland responded by issuing a reciprocal warrant for President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
Somalia's defense minister accused the Jubbaland forces of initiating the clashes on Wednesday, but the federal government responded with drone strikes, and both sides are reporting casualties.
Why it matters: The fighting is taking place in a strategically important region. Jubbaland, one of Somalia’s five semi-autonomous regions, is situated adjacent to Kenya and Ethiopia. It is Somalia’s breadbasket, its shoreline delineates a contested maritime zone with Kenya, with potential oil and gas deposits, and Kismayu is a key port.Workers at an organic cocoa processing plant in Ghana. Fears of insufficient rain in the region have driven cocoa prices to 7-month highs on global markets.
7: Giving someone a box of chocolates for the holidays? That could soon count as a luxury gift now as cocoa prices have reached their highest levels in seven months. Dry weather is expected to suppress crop yields in West Africa, one of the world’s main producers. Prices for the stuff reached $10,454 per metric ton.
2 billion: In the hours after Syrian despot Bashar Assad fled the country, ordinary Syrians ransacked his sumptuous presidential villa, making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of luxury goods and furnishings belonging to the “butcher of Damascus” and his wife. The Assad family had an estimated worth of $2 billion in a country wracked by war and poverty. Gear heads noted with awe that Assad’s private garage reportedly contained dozens of exotic cars, including a rare gullwing Mercedes and a Ferrari F50, worth nearly $2 million.
4: The city of Tokyo has moved to a four-day workweek for municipal employees, as part of a strategy to boost the country’s record-low birth rate. The average Japanese woman will have 1.2 children, well below the “replacement” rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. That extra day off is meant to ease the burden on families with small children, and maybe to give those on the fence about having kids some extra free time to … make them
6: A jury in New York acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny of manslaughter in the death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill subway performer, in 2023. Neely, who was Black, had been behaving erratically and threatening passengers before Penny, who is white, subdued him with a fatal chokehold for roughly six minutes. The case sparked intense debate about race, mental illness, and New York’s pandemic-driven crime surge.
5: Authorities arrested and arraigned Luigi Mangione, a person of interest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, on Monday in Altoona, PA. The 26-year-old, who was spotted at a McDonalds, was reportedly found with a 3D-printed gun and a silencer. He has been charged with five crimes in the Keystone State: carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to authorities, tampering with records of identification, and possessing “instruments of crime.” Late Monday, authorities in the Big Apple added their charges, including second-degree murder, and Mangione is expected to be extradited to New York.
US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Angolan President João Lourenço at the Presidential Palace in Luanda, Angola, on Dec. 3, 2024.
There’s also a security angle here. Angola isn’t just oil-rich; it has large reserves of copper and is home to large deposits of critical minerals, like the lithium and cobalt needed to make batteries for electric vehicles. That’s an arena of intense US-China competition.
The main focus for Biden this week is his proposed 835-mile rail line to connect the cobalt, lithium, and copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the copper-belt region of Zambia with the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic, from which these increasingly precious commodities can be exported to the US and Europe. Construction of the so-called Lobito Corridor is not yet underway.
Angola and many other sub-Saharan African countries have an angle here too. Lourenço knows that competition among China, the US, Russia, Japan, Europe, and others for African resources and infrastructure projects can give African leaders a negotiating leverage they don’t yet have.
Lourenço and Biden can both hope that incoming US President Donald Trump will see the value of these projects as new investment opportunities that score points against China.
Hard Numbers: VW goes on strike, Guinean soccer violence turns deadly, Scholz pledges Ukraine aid, US breaks travel record
FILE PHOTO: A man wearing an IG Metall (Industrial Union of Metalworkers) scarf holds a banner with the Volkswagen logo, as workers gather to strike against planned cuts to wages and possible factory closures, in Hanover, Germany, December 2, 2024. Picture taken with long exposure.
$19 billion: Tens of thousands of German Volkswagen workers launched strikes at multiple car plants on Monday, protesting €18 billion ($19 billion) in company budget cuts that resulted in three plant closures and pension cuts. Volkswagen is grappling with a 64% drop in third-quarter profits and declining market demand in China.
56: Fifty-six people, including many children, died in southeast Guinea after a disagreement over a refereeing decision turned violent at a soccer match held to honor military leader Mamady Doumbouya. Opposition group National Alliance for Change and Democracy blamed the ruling junta for failing to keep people safe while organizing tournaments to bolster political support for their leader in advance of a promised presidential election, which they say violates election law.
680 million: German Chancellor Olaf Scholzpledged $680 million in aid to Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv on Monday, his first trip to the city in over two years. New German military equipment is scheduled to be delivered this month amid questions about the long-term viability of Western support for Ukraine with the incoming administration in Washington.
3 million: US airport security cleared a record 3 million travelers on Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday that traditionally sees families reuniting from far and wide. So, pretty smooth at security, but plenty of travelers faced frustration from there: Airlines canceled 120 flights and delayed over 6,800.Hard Numbers: Notre Dame’s stones gleam after cleaning, Trump threatens yuge tariffs, Iceland gets new gov, Vaccine promises AIDS end
Participants make their way past the Notre-Dame Cathedral as they attend the 13th edition of the stand up Nautic Paddle race on the river Seine in Paris, France, December 1, 2024.
42,000: Workers restoring Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral after the fire that ravaged it five years ago had to clean 42,000 square meters of stone. They used special techniques to minimize damage to the original masonry in the process and the results are stunning: See it for yourself: The medieval cathedral reopens to the public on Dec. 8.
100: President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose 100% tariffs on goods imported from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the UAE), should the organization try to issue its own currency or displace the dollar’s place in world trade. It’s an odd threat, as some members – namely Russia and Iran – are already so heavily sanctioned that trade with the US is non-existent, while others – Brazil, Egypt, and the UAE – are major US allies.
15: Iceland’s Social Democrats gained 15 seats in the Althing – one of the world’s oldest parliaments – and will unseat the ruling conservatives after seven years of power following Saturday’s snap election. It’s yet another example of the anti-establishment trend few democracies seem able to escape in this election-studded year.
2: A twice-yearly vaccine against HIV/AIDS has proven 100% effective against contracting the virus, which a UN report for World AIDS Day on Sunday called a “historic crossroads” in the fight to end the epidemic. Generic versions of the drug will be available in 120 low-income countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, but the manufacturer has not approved generic patents for Latin America, which may represent a crucial weak spot in distribution.Malawi soldiers part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) military mission for eastern Congo, wait for the ceremony to repatriate the two bodies of South African soldiers killed in the ongoing war between M23 rebels and the Congolese army in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo February 20, 2024.
Fighters from the M23 rebel group in northeastern Congo have been targeting civilians in violation of a July ceasefire agreement, according to the Southern African Development Community, whose peacekeeping mandate there will expire on Dec. 15.
Background: For two years now, M23 forces backed by neighboring Rwanda have been fighting to establish control over mineral rich provinces in the region. The conflict has so far displaced at least 7 million people, and killed unknown thousands.
The SADC forces haven’t been able to push back the M23, but have at least managed to hold on to the key city of Goma, where hundreds of thousands of refugees are sheltering. Leaders from SADC countries are meeting in Zimbabwe on Thursday to discuss extending the mission, but should they fail to agree, M23 will have the upper hand.
UN Peacekeepers in the region are widely scorned by locals for their inability to keep ordinary people safe, while the DRC’s own army is poorly trained and deeply corrupt. Without SADC troops, Goma will likely fall, and Rwanda’s proxies will consolidate their hold on the region.
What does the Trump administration mean for the DRC? President Félix Tshisekedi has expressed excitement about working with Trump to deepen US-DRC relations, amid hopes the US will provide greater resources to help stabilize the country. However, what scant attention Trump gave to Congo on the campaign trail was overwhelmingly negative: Axios found that he cited Congolese migrants as criminals at least 29 times between Sept. 2023 and Oct. 2024, and accused the DRC of emptying prisons to send violent criminals to the US.