ADF

ADF STAFF After a push to recruit and train more female pilots, the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) announced it had conducted an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) mission led entirely by a female team. The mission, which used a Beechcraft King Air ISR aircraft, included two female pilots, an onboard technician, a mission operator and a female marshaller. This all-female mission was the first in the history of the NAF. “The NAF’s objective in this regard is to maximize all of the potentials of Nigeria’s vast human resource pool, male and female, to ensure the effective, efficient and timely employment…

VOICE OF AMERICA Shejirina Moni sits beside her children in front of their makeshift home in Juba, South Sudan’s capital. Six of her children have died of various illnesses. She has three surviving. “The first one died at 9 months,” she said. “Another one died at the age of 10 months. Another one died when he was crawling, about 3 months.” Moni’s story highlights a sad fact: Millions of children in South Sudan do not get routine vaccinations. They are vulnerable to preventable illnesses. In addition to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the country is battling a severe measles outbreak,…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Dozens of locals line up eagerly as the train heaves to a halt at a station in a remote rural region of South Africa’s coastal Eastern Cape province. The so-called Train of Hope has come to provide COVID-19 screening in one of South Africa’s virus hot spots from aboard a specially equipped mobile clinic. The Eastern Cape in mid-June 2020 accounted for 14% of South Africa’s COVID-19 infections nationwide. Since the first case was reported on March 5, Africa’s most industrialized country has recorded the continent’s highest number of cases. The train previously operated as a general health…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Scientists have discovered a microbe that protects mosquitoes from being infected with malaria. Team members in Kenya and the United Kingdom said the finding has “enormous potential” to control the disease. Malaria is spread by the bite of infected mosquitoes, so protecting them could also protect people. The researchers are investigating whether they can release infected mosquitoes into the wild or use spores to suppress the disease. The malaria-blocking bug, Microsporidia MB, was discovered by studying mosquitoes on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. It lives in the gut and genitals of the insects. The…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Chad is repaying Angola a debt of $100 million with cattle, Angola’s state-run newspaper has reported. The unusual agreement is seen as creating a win-win situation for both nations — Chad is short of cash and Angola needs cattle. More than 1,000 cows arrived by ship in Angola’s capital, Luanda, as the first payment, Jornal de Angola reported. In total, Angola will receive 75,000 cattle over 10 years, meaning it has accepted payment of $1,333 per animal. Chad had proposed repaying the 2017 debt with cattle, and Angola had agreed because it would help the Southern…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A supercomputer is boosting efforts in East Africa to control locust outbreaks that raise what the United Nations food agency calls “an unprecedented threat” to the region’s food security. The computer, a donation from the United Kingdom, uses satellite data to track locust swarms and predict their next destination. Quickly sharing the locusts’ movements with regional authorities is key to controlling the outbreak because even a small swarm of locusts in a single day can move nearly 100 miles and consume an amount of crops that would otherwise feed 35,000 people. Based in a regional climate center in…

BBB NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Rwanda, the country of a thousand hills, was the first in the world to embrace a commercial delivery service by drone aircraft when the company Zipline began flying blood in 2016. Rwandan President Paul Kagame sees drones as part of his country’s future; he wants them manufactured and piloted by Rwandans. Zipline has delivered tens of thousands of units of blood. But it is an exception. Its flights are classified as government flights, meaning it has high-level exemptions when it comes to air traffic management. The same is true in Kigali, the nation’s capital, where police…

ADF STAFF Sayyida Salme’s life was a whirlwind. She was a sultan’s daughter from what is now Tanzania. Denied any formal education, she taught herself to read and write. She spoke four languages — Swahili, Arabic, Turkish and German. She got pregnant out of wedlock, her brother tried to execute her, and she fled to Europe. When she became a penniless widowed mother, she became one of the first African women ever to write an autobiography. She is said to have carried with her a small bag of sand from a beach in Zanzibar throughout her life. She was born…

CLUES This needle-shaped volcanic plug stands 386 meters tall. Mosses, frequent fog and rain make climbing this peak dangerous, yet some still attempt the slippery ascent each year. The area around the peak is known for exotic wildlife, including an abundance of snakes. This formation has been called “The Dark Tower.”  ANSWER  Pico Cão Grande volcanic formation in São Tomé and Príncipe

ADF STAFF The video shot aboard an industrial Chinese trawler fishing in Ghanaian waters was graphic. Obtained by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), the footage began with the loud wails of a man off camera. A trawl cable had snapped, severely injuring his legs. As the camera zoomed in, he slapped his hands against the metal slab he was laid across. There was no medicine or medical personnel on board. By the time the trawler made it back to port, the man, a Ghanaian fisherman, was dead. Fishing is one of the world’s most dangerous professions, but Ghanaian workers told…