Sierra Leone’s president has fired the head of the immigration service days after footage was published showing him receiving a birthday gift from a fugitive Dutch drug kingpin.

The footage of Alusine Kanneh being handed a present by Johannes Leijdekkers – which has not been independently verified by the Guardian – was published by the investigative outlet Follow the Money and the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad on Friday.

The dinner is understood to have been held in an upmarket restaurant in Freetown, the country’s capital.

Leijdekkers, 33, one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives, was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison for drug smuggling by a Rotterdam court last June.

Kanneh was relieved of his duties the same day the reports were published but authorities in Freetown did not disclose the reason for his dismissal in a short statement by the presidential secretary.

For months speculation has swirled in the west African country that Kanneh and other members of the political elite had been helping Leijdekkers accumulate influence.

In February, a Guardian investigation established that Leijdekkers had been in the country since at least 2022 and had spent time at nightclubs and house parties.

A Reuters report in January placed him at a New Year’s Day church service in President Julius Maada Bio’s home town, sitting near the leader’s daughter Agnes Bio, with whom he is believed to be in a relationship.

Days before that event, the immigration ministry introduced an investment-for-citizenship scheme under Kanneh’s direction. Called Go-for-Gold, it offers a fast-track path to citizenship in 90 days for investors willing to pay $140,000 (£108,000). The traditional route to naturalisation involves eight years’ residence.

Leijdekkers has a passport from Turkey, where he previously resided after going on the run from Dutch authorities. It is unknown if he has Sierra Leonean documentation too.

At a press conference in January, Sierra Leonean police said their own investigations had established that the church service footage depicted a man called Omar Sheriff. The country’s police chief, William Fayia Sellu, declined to say at the time whether Sheriff and Leijdekkers were the same person.

Leijdekkers, who has assumed numerous aliases and nicknames, including Bolle Jos, was sentenced in absentia by a Rotterdam court last June to 24 years in prison for six drug transports totalling 7,000kg of cocaine, an armed robbery in Finland, and ordering the murder of an associate. He received a 10-year sentence in absentia by a court in Belgium in September over an attempt to smuggle drugs via the port of Antwerp in 2020.

Organised criminal groups have long used west African countries as a staging post for cocaine shipments from South America to Europe. The revelations about Leijdekkers come at an awkward moment for the authorities in Sierra Leone, which earlier this year recalled its ambassador from neighbouring Guinea after seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine were found in an embassy vehicle.

Dutch officials are still in discussions to extradite Leijdekkers, even though Sierra Leone does not have a formal extradition treaty with the Netherlands.

Sources in Freetown told the Guardian that Sierra Leone’s government wanted to swap Leijdekkers for the Netherlands-based influential social commentator Abdul Will Kamara, AKA Adebayor, whose videos and long WhatsApp voice notes are popular among older people and those in rural areas.

Officials and ruling party supporters claim he incited deadly riots in 2022 in the capital and north of the country that left at least 26 civilians and six police officers dead.

In February, the information minister, Chernor Bah, said two attempts to extradite Adebayor had been unsuccessful. Bah was approached for comment on Monday.

The mother of an alleged child bride has left a safe house in South Sudan to travel to be with her daughter after discovering the teenager is pregnant.

Deborah Kuir Yach made headlines last year when she opposed a competition for her daughter’s hand in marriage, insisting that her child Athiak Dau Riak was only 14. Fear of reprisals from her husband and family forced her to leave her home in the capital, Juba, and go into hiding.

After eight months living in a shelter under the protection of a local NGO, the 41-year-old mother of seven has travelled to Nairobi where Athiak is believed to be staying with relatives.

Despite the threats she faced after her stance became widely known, Yach said she is determined to be with her daughter – who is due to give birth this month – in keeping with the cultural tradition of the Dinka, one of the largest ethnic groups in South Sudan.

“Now that Athiak is pregnant, I can’t do anything about the marriage. Let her be with her husband. They will decide together whether she can go back to school later on,” said Yach. “[But] according to our Dinka tradition, a daughter must give birth to her first child in her mother’s home – that’s why I am going to Kenya.”

Yach does not know if Athiak will be allowed to stay with her but said she would visit her to guide her daughter into motherhood, and help take care of the baby.

Although she was perceived as a victim of child marriage by those who condemned the wedding, Athiak sided with family members who orchestrated it.

“Athiak disagrees with what I have done. She says that I brought shame to the family,” Yach told the Guardian before she left South Sudan. “But I explained to her that I didn’t want to stay where I am mistreated. Athiak wants to protect the image of the family but I will not go back, I am following my truth and my right,” she said, adding that she wants a divorce. “I just found out that he brought another wife home.”

In June 2024 Athiak travelled to Nairobi shortly after her traditional wedding to Chol Marol Deng, a South Sudanese man in his 40s who lives in Canada. A court case opened the same month by South Sudanese lawyer Josephine Adhet Deng against Yach’s husband, Dau Riak Magany, accusing him of arranging the marriage of a minor – a crime under South Sudan’s laws – failed to progress. Attempts by Deng to have Athiak brought back from Kenya were rejected by South Sudan’s public prosecution office in October 2024.

Yach has travelled to Kenya with her three younger daughters in the hope that she can protect them from a similar fate to Athiak. Her brother, Athiak’s uncle, who also publicly opposed the marriage, is supporting her.

“My niece is now pregnant and I’m not seeing this case going anywhere,” said Daniel Chol Yach, who lives in Canada. “I’ve tried tirelessly to alert the Canadian authorities but nothing has happened so far. Chol has been travelling freely and he impregnated Athiak, even though the marriage is not complete, and although he had said he would let her go back to school.” While the customary part of the wedding was celebrated in Juba, the marriage is not legally finalised.

“Now I want to make sure that my sister, Deborah, and my nieces have a better future. I’m renting a place for them in Nairobi. The kids will go to school there, and that will protect them from what happened to Athiak. With good education, they’ll be able to know what is best for their future.”

Yach hopes to put her daughters in school in Kenya and, eventually, to join her brother in Canada to build a better life for herself and her family. “The reason I leave my country is the future of my children. If I stayed in South Sudan, maybe they will be married young, too.”

Almost 1,000 civilians have been killed and hundreds more injured in military drone attacks across Africa as the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles continues unchecked on the continent, according to a report.

At least 50 separate deadly strikes by armed forces in Africa have been confirmed during the three years up to November 2024, with analysts describing a “striking pattern of civilian harm” with little or no accountability.

Although the rapid growth of armed drones deployed by Ukraine and Russia receives significant scrutiny, scant focus is being paid to the escalating use in Africa of a new breed of imported cheaper drones, such as Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2, said Cora Morris of campaign group Drone Wars UK, which on Monday published a report on the growth of armed drones in Africa, called Death on Delivery.

“This must change. Unless the international community moves rapidly towards developing and implementing a new control regime, we are highly likely to see more examples of the killing of civilians from the use of armed drones,” said Morris.

So far, the use of armed drones has been confirmed in at least six conflicts in Africa: Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, where most attacks were seen.

Drone strikes by the Ethiopian armed forces against adversaries such as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front were found to have killed more than 490 civilians in 26 separate attacks.

Elsewhere, at least 64 civilians died in nine separate drone strikes conducted by Malian armed forces battling separatist groups in the north of the country. In neighbouring Burkina Faso, researchers found more than 100 civilians have been killed in drone strikes carried out by the country’s military.

The Drone Wars UK report said the failure to control the proliferation of armed drones in Africa had led to more than 940 civilians being killed since November 2021, a figure it described as conservative.

Most armed drones in Africa are imported from Turkey, along with China and Iran, with researchers sounding the alarm over the growing popularity of “medium altitude, long endurance” (MALE) drones.

These can be flown remotely for many hours over a large distance, conducting surveillance as well as airstrikes.

The proliferation – and risks – of armed drones in African conflicts has been witnessed in Sudan’s civil war with their use in highly populated areas such as markets in the capital, Khartoum, having “grave” consequences for civilians. Iranian, Chinese and Turkish drones have been deployed by the Sudanese military while its adversary – the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has used UAE-supplied drones, the report said.

In Burkina Faso, Bayraktar TB2s have been deployed by Burkinabè military forces in their struggle against a jihadist insurgency. State-sponsored media regularly celebrated “neutralisations” of terrorists using what it described as sophisticated, precise drone technologies.

However, accounts from sources on the ground often yield a different narrative, pointing to frequently high civilian deaths. One incident in the country’s Sahel region in August 2023, saw drones strike a market in the village of Bouro, killing at least 28 civilians.

The report said: “The Burkinabè government’s wholesale celebration of strikes like that on Bouro’s market rests upon a perception of drone warfare as an efficient, advanced development in the country’s military operations, signifying a technically sophisticated arsenal operated by a vigilant, effective government with a firm grip on its territories.

“However, on-the-ground research quickly reveals the falsity of this picture: exposing erratic bombings of innocent communities, which sow only further destruction and insecurity.”

Mass prison escapes during the chaos of fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have captured two of its largest cities over the past two months, have caused panic among the public.

Jailbreaks involving thousands of people at four prisons in the region have accompanied the rapid advance that the militia started in January in its fighting against the Congolese army that also caused widespread chaos and confusion.

“With prisoners escaping, we feel insecure,” said Dufina Tabu Mwenebatende, a human rights activist with the Association des Volontaires du Congo (Association of Congo Volunteers).

As mayhem ensued during the approach and entry of M23 into areas of eastern DRC, security guards assigned to keep prisons secure abandoned their positions, creating opportunities for escape.

More than 4,000 prisoners escaped from Munzenze prison in Goma on the night of 27 January as M23 entered the city, which is the capital of North Kivu province. It later emerged that hundreds of female inmates had been attacked in their wing and raped and burned alive.

More escapes – in Bukavu, Kabare and Kalemie central prison – took place subsequently, with the most recent, at Kalemie, on 19 February.

The inmates had been convicted of crimes including rape, murder, participation in insurrection movements, embezzlement and public order offences.

A Bukavu-based security analyst who requested anonymity said the escaped prisoners may try to settle scores with their victims. “Some people who are detained harbour a mortal grudge against those who arrested them or accused them. When they manage to get out of prison, they go off to seek revenge. This is a danger,” he said.

An escaper from the Goma prison who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity said disorder at the facility started at midnight and he had to jump out of a window to escape, stepping on corpses as he made his way out.

“Even though the police were killing some of the escapers outside the prison, I told myself that human beings only die once. That’s when I threw myself out of the window and fell out of the back of the prison,” said the escaper, who had been serving a 10-year sentence.

In Goma and Bukavu, people reported seeing escaped inmates committing crimes. Patient Bisimwa, a resident of Bukavu, said: “I saw a group of prisoners with dirty firearms in my avenue. They had even looted an electronics repair shop close to my house.”

He added: “Crime has reached a worrying level in some parts of Bukavu and some escapers are at the root of all this, and that worries us.”

Police stations run by Congo’s national police service in Goma and Bukavu stopped operating after the capture of the cities. Alliance Fleuve Congo (Congo River Alliance), a coalition of militias including M23 that is acting in place of the government in Goma and Bukavu, has promised to build and rehabilitate detention facilities. But with an increase in crime, people are taking the law into their own hands, beating up some suspects and setting others on fire.

At a security meeting on 24 February, Julien Katembo Ndalieni, the rebel coalition-appointed mayor of Goma, criticised the mob action. “We call on the population to put an end to this practice. Today, some people take advantage of the situation to settle personal scores: false accusations are made against innocent people, who are then lynched by the crowd,” he said, calling on people to take alleged thieves to the authorities.

M23’s rapid advance is the worst escalation in years in the decades-long conflict in eastern DRC. It has killed about 7,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, exacerbating an already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the region.

The group is among more than 100 armed factions fighting against Congolese forces in the mineral-rich eastern DRC. The group says it exists to protect the interests of minorities, including protecting the the Tutsi against Hutu rebel groups who escaped to the DRC after taking part in the 1994 genocide that targeted the Tutsi. The DRC, the UN, the US and other countries say the militia is supported by Rwanda, which UN experts say uses the group to extract and export valuable minerals. Rwanda denies the claims.

A prominent French journalist has said he is stepping down from his role as an expert analyst for broadcaster RTL after provoking an uproar by comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a second world war massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.

Jean-Michel Aphatie, a veteran reporter and broadcaster, insisted that while he would not be returning to RTL, he wholly stood by his comments made on the radio station in February equating atrocities committed by France in Algeria with those of Nazi Germany in occupied France.

“I will not return to RTL. It is my decision,” the journalist wrote on X, after the radio station suspended him from air for a week.

On 25 February he said on air: “Every year in France, we commemorate what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane – the massacre of an entire village. But we have committed hundreds of these, in Algeria. Are we aware of this?”

He was referring to the village where an SS unit returning to the front in Normandy massacred 642 residents on 10 June 1944. Leaving a chilling memorial for future generations, the village was never rebuilt.

Challenged by the anchor over whether “we [the French] behaved like the Nazis”, Aphatie said: “The Nazis behaved like us.”

On X, he acknowledged his comments had created a “debate” but said it was of great importance to understand the full story over France’s 1830-1962 presence in Algeria, saying he was “horrified” by what he had read in history books.

After being suspended for a week by the channel it means that “if I come back to RTL I validate this and admit to making a mistake. This is a line that cannot be crossed.”

His comments had prompted a flurry of complaints to audio-visual regulator Arcom, which has opened an investigation.

France’s conduct in Algeria during the 1954-62 war that led to independence and previous decades remain the subject of often painful debate in both countries.

Historians from both sides have over the last years documented numerous violations including arbitrary killings and detention carried out by French forces and the history still burdens French-Algerian relations to this day.

The far right in France has long defended French policies in those years with Algeria War veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the National Front (FN) party and died earlier this year, drawing much support from French settlers who had to return after independence.

The South African playwright and director Athol Fugard, whose works included the plays Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island and the novel Tsotsi, has died at the age of 92.

A major political dissident playwright of the 20th century, Fugard wrote more than 30 dramas including Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (in 1972) and “Master Harold” … and the Boys (1982). Both of those drew upon the time in the 1950s when he could only find employment as a clerk in one of the courts where black South Africans were charged (and inevitably convicted) of breaches of the “pass laws”, designed to control the movements of a racially segregated population under the apartheid system. There, he witnessed hourly the dehumanisation of those who had chosen the “wrong” streets or people.

Fugard’s cultural and political impact was rivalled elsewhere only by the dramas of Václav Havel in what was then Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. Havel was jailed and, when released, abandoned theatre to become the first president of the Czech Republic. Fugard – despite setting up two theatre companies in the segregated black townships and courageously refusing to play to the state-mandated “whites only” audiences – avoided prison, due to being white and therefore not a primary target of the racist government. The worst direct personal persecutions Fugard suffered were the removal of his passport and the occasional banning of plays and burning of books. He was always conscious, though, of benefiting from the immoral hierarchy his writing decried.

The writer’s race would also have made him an impossible political leader in the new Republic of South Africa: its dissident turned president in the Havel manner was Nelson Mandela, who had a strong background presence in Fugard’s plays, especially The Island (1972), set on Robben Island, the penitentiary for political prisoners where Mandela had spent some of his 27 years of incarceration.

Born in 1932, Fugard was the only child of Harold, from an immigrant family of Irish descent, and Elizabeth, whose Potgieter clan were among the early Afrikaans settlers of Dutch stock. A jazz pianist turned shopkeeper, Harold moved his family in 1935 to Port Elizabeth, an urban industrial town that remained Fugard’s main home and most regular dramatic setting for the next nine decades.

During his childhood, the family ran a hotel and cafe in Port Elizabeth where “Hally” (as the young Athol was known) grew up. There, as a teenager in the late 1940s, an incident occurred that would lie at the heart of his psychology and creativity. In published extracts from his notebooks, Fugard explained how Sam Semela, a black employee in the family businesses, became “the most significant – the only – friend of my boyhood years”. But, after a “rare quarrel”, Hally pulled racial rank and spat in Semela’s face.

While confiding to his journal that he would never be able to “deal with the shame that overwhelmed me the second after”, Fugard made literary recompense with “Master Harold” … and the Boys, its title acknowledging a racist hierarchy between white people and their servants that is overturned by a devastatingly apologetic depiction of how the demon of superiority can rise even in the mind of someone who defines as a liberal: the spitting scene is its climax. One of the dedicatees of the published play is “Sam”, with whom Fugard had been reconciled.

Public admission of this shaming story was typical of Fugard’s personal honesty, but can also be seen as an attempt to forestall any “saint” or “saviour” interpretation of his work. The contemporary pejorative term “white saviour”, with its implication of credit stolen and virtue claimed, was not yet widely used, but, once it was, Fugard faced retrospective accusation.

A complication arose with the working methods of the African Theatre Workshop and Serpent Players, two multi-racial companies Fugard and his wife, Shiela (also a writer) formed either side of 1960, first in Johannesburg and then Port Elizabeth. Early Fugard plays such as No-Good Friday (1958), Nongogo (1959) and The Coat (1966) improvised scenes with actors based on their own experiences and then created a fixed text for performance.

As a major Fugard scholar, Professor Dennis Walder, has pointed out, it was yet another horror of the system that the writer could only work with colleagues of colour at his home by registering them, for bureaucratic purposes, as his domestic staff.

Fugard’s desire to collaborate with the wronged community, rather than writing anti-apartheid stories from an isolated study in a white area (a criticism of some contemporaries), can reasonably be seen as another compensating response to the Sam shame. But a majority black co-operative run by a white man subsequently raised issues of “appropriation” to which Fugard was alert: editions of The Island and its companion play, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972), in which someone takes on the identity of a dead man in order to use his “pass book” (ID papers), have the credit “devised by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona”, with royalties split three ways.

The circumstances in which Fugard’s early plays were made now sound like something from dystopian fiction. The South African police would raid rehearsals, check scripts and take the names of actors; it became standard for performers to be listed in programmes and on posters under the identities of fictional characters they had previously played.

The end of apartheid and Mandela’s presidency removed, from 1994, what the novelist Nadine Gordimer had called “the only subject” for white liberal writers in South Africa. Fugard, though, wrote plays that effectively reflected the country’s “truth and reconciliation” phase of attempted restorative justice.

In The Train Driver (2010), his strongest late work, the white title character seeks out the family of a black mother and child who died when they stepped in front of his train; in Sorrows And Rejoicing (2001), the family of a dead, white anti-apartheid writer reflect on the evasions of his life.

That Fugard continued as a dramatist even when the driving cause of his first plays was achieved was due to the incompleteness of the victory. Whereas anti-Soviet dramas now have only historical interest – as relative democracy has continued in Russia’s former bloc – the 2021 revival of Fugard’s Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, at the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond, remained disconcertingly relevant.

While the specific evil it dramatised – the ban on interracial sex in South Africa from 1927 to 1985 – was gone, the play now served a new purpose: a metaphor for the continuing inequalities of opportunity and security suffered by people of colour around the world. The unexpected longevity of Statements continued a paradox that ran through Fugard’s career: situations that he detested as a citizen were his dramatic fuel.

Parents leaving the London production of Statements could be heard explaining to appalled children that the immorality laws had existed in a Commonwealth country during the lifetime of anyone older than 36. That duty of education will keep Fugard’s plays in the theatrical canon, as will the broader lessons of Statements, “Master Harold” … and the Boys and The Island in how racism roots and grows. His 1980 novel Tsotsi, about crime in Johannesburg, was adapted as an Oscar-winning 2005 film, directed by Gavin Hood.

Fugard would have been the first to acknowledge that others, such as Kani and Ntshona, were the theatrical Mandelas of free South Africa, but the man who called himself “a classic example of the impotent, white liberal” was an epitome of the good people who, in Hannah Arendt’s formulation, must act if evil is not to prevail.

Digital blackouts reached a record high in 2024 in Africa as more governments sought to keep millions of citizens off the internet than in any other period over the last decade.

A report released by the internet rights group Access Now and #KeepItOn, a coalition of hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide, found there were 21 shutdowns in 15 African countries, surpassing the existing record of 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.

Authorities in Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritius joined repeat offenders such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya. Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania were also on the list. But perpetrators also included militias and other non-state actors.

Telecommunication and internet service providers who shut services based on government orders are also complicit in violating people’s rights, said Felicia Anthonio, the #KeepItOn campaign manager at Access Now, citing the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.

The details showed that most of the shutdowns were imposed as a response to conflicts, protests and political instability. There were also restrictions during elections.

The trend was replicated across the world with more internet shutdowns and in more countries: 296 shutdowns across 54 countries, compared with 283 shutdowns in 39 countries the previous year.

Access Now said the figures were the worst since it started keeping records in 2016 and that the rise reflected “a world where internet access is consistently weaponised, restricted, and precarious”.

“Behind each of the 1,754 shutdowns since 2016 is a story of people and communities cut off from the world and each other, often during political upheaval, unrest, violence and war,” the report said.

At least five shutdowns in Africa had been imposed for more than a year by the end of 2024, according to Access Now. As of early 2025, the social network Meta was still restricted in Uganda, despite authorities engaging with its representatives. On the Equatorial Guinean island of Annobon, internet and cell services have been cut off since an August 2024 protest over environmental concerns and isolation from the rest of the country.

The increase in shutdowns led the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to pass a landmark resolution in March 2024 to help reverse the trend.

But the regression had continued, said Anthonio. “It’s rather unfortunate we saw more election-related shutdowns in Africa and other places in 2024 despite the adoption of the ACHPR resolution last year,” she said.

“Despite this, the resolution is a positive step as it has served as a vital resource and reference for civil society’s advocacy against rights-harming shutdowns. It is difficult for us to tell if the resolution is yielding results already, but we did see authorities in countries like Mauritius and South Sudan [in January 2025] backtrack or reverse shutdown orders.”

Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa and elsewhere to mark International Women’s Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.

On the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadiköy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.

The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women’s role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”

Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women’s rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.

The Turkish president in 2021 withdrew his country from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkey’s “We Will Stop Femicides” platform says 394 women were killed by men in 2024.

“There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further,” Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.

In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific healthcare, equal pay and other issues in which they don’t get the same treatment as men.

In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.

Opening the center on International Women’s Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.

From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade, and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.

In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pelicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.

In the Nigerian capital of Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple – the traditional color of the women’s liberation movement.

In Russia, the women’s day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St Petersburg.

In Berlin, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.

Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa and elsewhere to mark International Women’s Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.

On the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadiköy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.

The government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women’s role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”

Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women’s rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.

The Turkish president in 2021 withdrew his country from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkey’s “We Will Stop Femicides” platform says 394 women were killed by men in 2024.

“There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further,” Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.

In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific healthcare, equal pay and other issues in which they don’t get the same treatment as men.

In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.

Opening the center on International Women’s Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.

From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade, and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.

In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pelicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.

In the Nigerian capital of Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple – the traditional color of the women’s liberation movement.

In Russia, the women’s day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St Petersburg.

In Berlin, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.

In 2019, Alma Asinobi, a Nigerian postgraduate architecture student, gave herself an ambitious goal after obtaining her first passport: to visit up to 16 countries every year.

Then Covid-19 triggered a global lockdown, curtailing her dreams. Since restrictions were lifted, she has visited more than 30 countries and founded a travel agency, Kaijego.

On 15 March, the 26-year-old will attempt to fulfil another ambition: breaking the Guinness world record for the shortest time traversing all seven continents.

“It is the most ‘do it afraid’ thing I’ve done in my life,” she said.

If she succeeds, she will join a string of freshly minted record-holders in west Africa, where a new generation is passionately embracing breaking records. Since 2023, there have been more than 7,000 applications from the region’s 16 countries, according to Nicholas Brookes, the marketing director at Guinness World Records (GWR).

Asinobi, who travelled to other countries to obtain some of the 10 visas needed for the challenge, wants to highlight the difficulties posed by travelling with a “low-mobility” passport. On the 2025 Henley Passport Index, which ranks 199 countries by travel freedoms, Nigeria is tied in 88th place with Ethiopia and Myanmar.

Nigerian travellers routinely complain of being pulled out of immigration queues or not being allowed to board flights for mundane reasons at border controls in Europe, North America and even in Africa.

“My dreams will not be limited by the colour of my skin or the colour of my passport,” Asinobi said.

In September 2023, officials in Egypt kept her from proceeding to Jordan and Qatar for an hour, claiming that due to an airline policy she had to show a return ticket to Nigeria.

“When people say ‘it’s the policy’, they expect that you just keep quiet,” said Asinobi, whose checked-in luggage on that occasion was sent to another city and never recovered. “In two minutes, the matter was resolved automatically when I said they had to show me where that policy was.”

GWR rules require her to step foot on all seven continents by briefly leaving the airports she will fly between, and to document her journey with evidence at landmarks. Asinobi’s journey will start in Antarctica – where she is looking forward to seeing penguins – and end in Australia.

“I’m starting at the most unpredictable point, which makes the most sense because it’s when the wheels take off that the timer starts,” she said. “It’s up to me, the weather, God, so many different things. I just have to take one step at a time and ensure that I’m going at maximum speed. I’m obeying all the rules and I’m staying on track until I get to Australia.”

For months, Asinobi had been preparing to break the 2023 record of 73 hours. But on Thursday evening she discovered that an American national, Johnny Buckingham, had been certified as the new record holder with a time of 64 hours, travelled in February.

On Friday morning she posted on X: “Am I crazy enough to challenge a US Airforce veteran to break a mission-planning record with barely a week to plan? YES.”

Asinobi hopes to break another record – the most signatures on a piece of travel memorabilia – by asking thousands of people to sign a Nigerian flag she is travelling with at a party in Lagos on her return.

Fellow Nigerians have rallied to her cause. “This here is bravery and I salute this,” said Fiyinfoluwa Akinsiku, a Worcestershire-based doctor who circled the world with a Nigerian passport in nine years, including a 2019 trip to Antarctica. “Can’t wait to welcome you to the elite club of less than 1% of the world’s population to travel to all seven continents.”

A South Sudanese general and dozens of soldiers have been killed after a United Nations helicopter trying to evacuate them from the northern town of Nasir came under attack, the government has said.

The UN said Friday’s incident, which could deal a blow to an already fragile peace process, was “utterly abhorrent” and a possible war crime.

A power-sharing agreement between President Salva Kiir and first vice-president Riek Machar has been threatened in recent weeks by clashes between their allied forces in the north-eastern Upper Nile state.

The UN crew was trying to airlift soldiers after heavy clashes in Nasir between national forces and the so-called White Army, a militia that Kiir’s government has linked to forces loyal to Machar, his bitter rival.

In a national address announcing the deaths of Gen Majur Dak and other soldiers, Kiir said Machar had assured him and the UN representative that the general would be safe and that the rescue mission should fly to Nasir to evacuate him and his men.

Kiir urged citizens to remain calm, stating: “I have said it time and again that our country will not go back to war. Let no one take law into their hands.

“The government which I lead will handle this crisis. We will remain steadfast in the path of peace,” he added.

The information minister, Michael Makuei, said “approximately 27” troops were killed. A UN crew member was among the dead.

It was not immediately clear if the helicopter was hit as it was in the air or if the attack took place while it was still on the ground.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, ended a five-year civil war in 2018 with a power-sharing agreement between Kiir and Machar.

But Kiir’s allies have accused Machar’s forces of fomenting unrest in Nasir county, in league with the White Army, a loose band of armed youths in the region from the same ethnic Nuer community as the vice-president.

Machar’s spokesperson Puok Both Baluang declined to comment on the attack. Machar’s party has previously denied involvement in the recent fighting in Nasir.

The head of the UN mission in South Sudan (Unmiss), Nicholas Haysom, said the attack was “utterly abhorrent” and might constitute a war crime under international law.

“We also regret the killing of those that we were attempting to extract, particularly when assurances of safe passage had been received. Unmiss urges an investigation to determine those responsible and hold them accountable,” he said.

Machar’s spokesperson said earlier this week that security forces had arrested the petroleum minister, the peacebuilding minister, the deputy head of the army and other senior military officials allied with Machar, potentially jeopardising the 2018 peace deal that ended a civil war between Kiir’s and Machar’s forces.

The government has not commented on the detentions and all the detained officials, apart from the peacebuilding minister, remain in custody or under house arrest, according to Machar’s spokesperson.

The White Army fought alongside Machar’s forces in the 2013-18 civil war that pitted them against predominantly ethnic Dinka troops loyal to Kiir.

Analysts have warned that the escalating tensions could lead to a full-blown conflict. “South Sudan is slipping rapidly toward full-blown war,” said the International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa director, Alan Boswell.

He urged the UN to prepare peacekeepers to save civilian lives, adding: “We fear large-scale ethnic massacres if the situation is not soon contained.”

In a statement, the UN urged “all actors to refrain from further violence and for the country’s leaders to urgently intervene to resolve tensions through dialogue and ensure that the security situation in Nasir, and more broadly, does not deteriorate”.

The UN mission in South Sudan was established soon after the country won independence from Sudan in 2011. Almost 20,000 peacekeepers from 73 countries serve in it.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this story

His Royal Highness King Godwin Bebe Okpabi has carried bottles of water drawn from the wells of his homeland in the Niger delta to the high court in London.

It stinks. “This is the water that Shell has left for my people,” said the ruler of the Ogale community in Ogoniland, Nigeria. “This is poison, and they are spending millions of dollars to pay the best lawyers in the world so that they will not clean my land.”

For the past three and a half weeks, lawyers for Shell have argued at the high court that their client cannot be held responsible for an environmental catastrophe in Ogale, which has suffered from decades of spills and pollution from oil extraction.

For most of that time, Okpabi was there too, watching proceedings in court 63, a nondescript room lined with empty bookcases. Between hearings, he met journalists and activists to spread word of the health crisis his people face.

“A people have been completely destroyed: people’s way of life destroyed; people’s only drinking water, which is the underground water aquifer, has been poisoned; people’s farmland has been completely poisoned; people’s streams that they use [for] their normal livelihood have been completely destroyed,” he said.

When oil first flowed from the wells in Ogoniland in 1956, before Okpabi was born, it was a lush landscape of mangrove forests. Its sparkling watercourses were populated by fishes, crabs, oysters and other creatures. The land’s people were primarily fishers and farmers.

Five and a half decades later, scientists from the UN Environment Programme visited the region to investigate the industry’s effects. They found extensive soil and groundwater contamination, mangrove roots choked with bitumen-like substances, surface water in creeks and streams covered in thick layers of oil. The fish had fled or died and farmers struggled to grow crops in fields soaked with oil.

Of all the areas tested, Nisisioken Ogale, Okpabi’s domain, was “of most immediate concern”. People there were drinking from wells contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels more than 900 times the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline. Follow-up testing carried out in the same area last year found levels that were even higher – 2,600 times the WHO guideline.

The effects of this contamination have been tragic, says Okpabi. “There is a lot of cancer: young girls of 20 to 30 years old, 40 years old, developing breast cancer and other forms of cancer; a lot of strange skin diseases that we don’t know the cause of; low life expectancy, people just drying up and dying. Even eye diseases. In some cases birth defects … Strange diseases everywhere in our lives.”

The trial centres on claims by Oganiland’s Ogale and Bille communities that the enduring effects of hundreds of leaks and spills from Shell’s pipelines and infrastructure have breached their right to a clean and healthy environment.

The three and a half weeks of hearings, which ended on Friday, were a “preliminary issues trial”, heard by Mrs Justice Juliet May, to determine the scope of the legal issues to be decided at the case’s full trial, set for late 2026. Although the case is being heard by a British judge in a UK court, it will apply Nigerian law, and so May heard from a range of senior Nigerian lawyers about what the law is and how it should be applied.

The claimants, represented by the London law firm Leigh Day, argue that oil pollution by a private company could be legally construed as a violation of a community’s fundamental rights under the Nigerian constitution and African charter. A second key issue was whether Shell could be held responsible for damage to its pipelines due to oil theft, or for the waste produced as a result of illegal refining of spilled or stolen oil – endemic in the Niger delta.

Shell argues it cannot be held responsible. The company insists its Nigerian subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), works closely with the Nigerian government to prevent spills and to respond to them and clean them up when they do occur.

“We strongly believe in the merits of our case. Oil is being stolen on an industrial scale in the Niger delta. This criminality is a major source of pollution and is the cause of the majority of spills in the Bille and Ogale claims,” a spokesperson for the company said.

But for Okpabi, the legal technicalities wrangled over in the court have been frustrating, “because as we are sitting here for these three weeks, people are dying at home,” he said.

“I’m not a lawyer, but as I sit down in the court and I see all the arguments going on, Shell trying to bring up arguments as if to try to see how they can wheedle their way out [of it], it’s very painful. But I trust the judicial system here.”

More than 500 people may have been tortured or starved to death and then buried in a secret mass grave north of Khartoum, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.

A visit to a base belonging to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) shortly after it was retaken by the Sudanese military found a previously unknown detention centre, with manacles hanging from doors, apparent punishment chambers and bloodstains on the floor. Accounts from people held at the detention centre describe being repeatedly tortured by their captors.

Nearby was a large burial site with at least 550 unmarked graves, many of them freshly dug and a number apparently containing multiple bodies.

The site is the biggest makeshift burial ground found in Sudan during its civil war and, if confirmed, would make this one of the worst war crimes of Sudan’s brutal conflict.

People rescued from the detention centre at the base’s southern perimeter, about 40 miles (70km) north of the capital, Khartoum, said that many had died inside and were believed to be buried nearby.

Examination of survivors by doctors found myriad signs of torture and concluded they were being starved.

The RSF took over the base, close to the village of Garri, as a command and training centre after fighting began with the Sudanese military almost two years ago. Satellite images and military sources confirm that no graves were present at the location before the war started on 15 April 2023.

The conflict has caused one of the world’s worst famines in decades, killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 14 million people to leave their homes.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has investigated abuses throughout Sudan during the war, said the detention centre site could constitute “one of the largest atrocity crime scenes discovered in Sudan since the war started”, and called for UN war crime investigators to be given access.

Dr Hosham al-Shekh, who examined 135 men who were found there after the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) recaptured the site in late January, said clinical evidence of torture and chronic malnutrition was widespread.

Shekh told the Guardian that the men – all of whom were civilians – were so traumatised when they were discovered that many could not speak.

“When we got there, they couldn’t even walk out. We had to carry them out. They had marks of being severely beaten, tortured,” he said. “Some of them were badly injured from the torture.

“Some of them had been shot in the leg with a bullet. They were beaten with sticks which left marks: clean straight scars from being beaten. All of them were tortured.”

One man was beaten so frequently by RSF guards that he adopted a prolonged foetal position to protect himself.

“They beat me in the morning and at night, they discriminated against me. I got so used to sitting with my knees tucked up that now I cannot straighten my legs to walk,” he said in a statement to Sudanese military medical staff.

The findings raise questions over the credibility of the RSF, coming days after it signed a political charter in Kenya to establish a parallel Sudanese government in areas it controls.

Satellite images of the base confirm that the graves appeared only after the war began and after the RSF occupied the site. An image taken weeks after the war began shows no trace of burial mounds beside a single-track road on the base.

Another image of the same location, captured a year later on 25 May 2024, reveals a significant number of mounds stretching over a distance of about 200 metres.

Capt Jalal Abaker, of the Sudanese military, said he had served on the Garri base up to the outbreak of war in 2023 and said there was no burial site then. “I was there until Ramadan that year [22 March to 20 April 2023],” he said. “There was no cemetery.”

Sgt Mohammed Amin, who is now stationed at Garri, said: “All the bodies buried there died on the base.”

Shekh added that survivors talked of other captives dying. “A lot of them told me that a lot had passed away inside. Many, they said, died because of the torture.”

A senior Sudanese army officer, Col Bashir Tamil, said detainees were found with their hands and feet tied together. “They were in a very bad condition with marks on their bodies and injuries,” he added.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, at HRW’s crisis, conflict and arms division, said it was “vital” that the authorities in control of the base treated it as a potential war crime site and made “immediate efforts to secure, collect and safeguard evidence that may be critical for accountability efforts”.

The site, so far, appears to be fully preserved with no public access with the Sudanese military protecting the location to safeguard evidence. International mass grave experts hope independent analysts will be allowed access to the site.

Many of the conflict’s most notorious atrocities have occurred in the western region of Darfur, with the RSF and allied Arab militias accused of ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year the US accused the paramilitary group of genocide.

The international criminal court is investigating abuses in Darfur. Evidence of the crimes against humanity uncovered by the Guardian are being passed to the ICC prosecutor.

The Sudanese army is also accused of committing serious atrocities against civilians, with its leaders sanctioned by the US.

Military sources believe that the RSF never expected the detention centre and burial ground near Garri to be found. Until recently, the group occupied so much territory in the region that it may have believed the site was secure from attack.

The RSF has been contacted for comment. When accused of abuses in the past, the group has responded by forwarding a code of conduct banning mistreatment of detainees and saying it had a committee to investigate abuses and prosecute those responsible.

The state department has ordered an immediate pause on most US foreign assistance to South Africa, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, officially implementing a contentious executive order by Donald Trump.

The directive, issued on Thursday, implements Executive Order 14204 targeting what the administration called “egregious actions” by South Africa. It orders all state department entities to immediately suspend aid disbursements, with minimal exceptions.

“To effectively implement EO 14204, all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa,” reads the cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

The cable follows the 7 February order, amid a broader reassessment of US foreign aid which paused certain foreign assistance pending review.

The order specifically cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of Dutch colonizers who implemented the segregationist regime that denied basic rights to the Black majority until 1994.

The South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump super-ally who heads the administration’s government efficiency team and has condemned his homeland for “openly racist policies”, is widely seen as influencing the administration’s stance toward a country where white South Africans, just 7% of the population, still disproportionately control most wealth and land.

According to the cable, Rubio has delegated authority to Pete Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration’s evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, to determine whether specific aid programs should continue. The guidance emphasizes there is “a very high bar for such requests”.

Only Pepfar, the US global HIV/Aids program that provides life-saving treatment to millions of South Africans, will proceed without additional review, according to the cable. All other assistance programs require special permission, even those that had received prior exceptions under the January foreign aid pause.

This is the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two generally friendly nations, starting when President Trump accused South Africa of using its new land law to discriminate against white citizens – claims South African president Cyril Ramaphosa rejected as misinformation.

The bill in question controversially permits government acquisition of private land without compensation in certain circumstances, though its supporters say such seizures would be rare and subject to judicial review.

Trump has also criticized South Africa’s leading role in its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice, while also offering refugee status to wealthy white Afrikaners who wanted to relocate to the United States, further incensing the country.

The aid freeze also follows South Africa’s recent announcement that it is preparing a new trade proposal for the Trump administration, as officials anticipate the possible end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act – which has allowed billions in dirty-free exports to the United States.

Earlier on Thursday, South Africa issued a statement acknowledging the US withdrawal from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp), which has canceled previously funded climate projects following Trump’s revocation of international climate finance initiatives.

The state department did not respond to a request for comment.

Members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a US government agency promoting economic development in Africa after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.

Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon.

The incident was the latest case of resistance to attempts driven by Trump and Musk to slash the federal workforce by gutting and closing agencies and laying off federal employees.

Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.

In Wednesday’s episode, workers instructed a security guard at USADF’s headquarters to deny the Doge team access when they arrived accompanied by Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered USAid. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.

Staff cited a letter sent by the agency’s chair, Ward Brehm, who was not present at the time, to Doge the previous day making clear that it would not be allowed to enter in his absence.

“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote, according to the Hill, which obtained a copy of the letter.

Brehm also declined to cooperate with Marocco unless he was officially appointed to the agency’s board.

“I will look forward to working with Mr Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote.

“Until these legal requirements are met, Mr Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the foundation’s behalf.”

About 30 workers were in the building when Marocco arrived with a Doge team – described as young men wearing backpacks – intent on carrying out firings based on an executive order issued by Trump on 19 February, the Washington Post reported.

Trump’s order declared USADF and three other agencies – the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States Institute of Peace – as “unnecessary” and subject to elimination.

Wednesday’s standoff followed a similar exchange at the IAF’s headquarters earlier this week.

The workers’ defiant stand comes after Democrats publicly condemned the attempted dismantling of the agency as illegal.

“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” Democratic members of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee wrote in a 24 February letter to Trump.

A USADF official told the Washington Post the terms of its governing statute meant that it did not have to take orders from Marocco.

“It’s explicit in the statute that the agency can only be dissolved by an act of Congress and the president can only be hired and fired by the board,” the official said.

The agency was created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people.

Food rations for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have been slashed in half by the World Food Programme, days after refugees in Kenya protested against a reduction to their rations.

The WFP, which is funded entirely by voluntary contributions and provides assistance to more than 150 million people, said it did not have enough funds to continue to provide the full ration so would be reducing the food voucher to 726 Bangladeshi taka (£4.60) per person, from 1,515 taka.

The agency told refugee authorities in Bangladesh the decision had been made after attempts to raise more funds had been unsuccessful and because cost-saving measures could not cover the funding shortfall.

Daniel Sullivan, the director for Africa, Asia, and the Middle East at Refugees International, said the cut to aid for Rohingya refugees was a result of “indefensible harm” caused by aid cuts by the US, UK and others.

While aid budgets had already been stretched, further strain was added in January by Donald Trump’s freeze on US aid spending and then the UK’s decision in February to cut aid spending from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%.

Sullivan said: “This sudden and drastic reduction of vital daily food will be devastating for over a million refugees. The decision will also result in huge knock-on effects for the health and safety of the largest refugee settlement in the world.”

He said that when food rations were previously cut in 2023, until the US filled a funding shortfall, there was an increase in malnutrition and gender-based violence.

Sullivan said: “With USAid decimated, and other donors following suit with their own reductions, the outlook for restored food aid is dismal and will lead to the loss of life.”

The monthly food voucher is provided on a card issued to the refugees, which they must spend at WFP outlets in the camps. Refugees said that at current costs the voucher would amount to enough to buy 10kg of rice, 1.5kg of lentils and 500g of salt.

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, the refugee relief and repatriation commissioner of Bangladesh, said Rohingya refugees had already been “barely surviving” with the existing monthly food ration.

He said: “Cutting the ration over half will have a horrible impact on refugee health and nutrition. Children and women will bear the brunt of this cut, as they make up about 78% of the refugee population here.

“In fact, this cut could also lead to crime in the community as refugees struggle to make ends meet. Maintaining law and order in and around the camps will be extra challenging for the government now.”

More than 1.3 million Rohingya refugees live in the camps of Cox’s Bazar. Nur Qadr, a Rohingya teacher who lives in the Jamtoli refugee camp, said: “It feels like the world wants to starve us to death.

“We are human beings, just like the people in [western] nations. We are already barely making it through.”

Jafor Alom, a Rohingya refugee in Balukhali camp, said that the prices of food and other basic necessities had more than doubled in Bangladesh over the past four years.

He said: “To cope with the situation, we had actually been praying for an increase in the $12.50 [£9.70] food ration. But now, they are cutting down the ration even further. We all have to starve now.”

Last week, the WFP informed refugees in Kenya that it would be reducing their food rations to 3kg of cereals a month and would no longer provide beans or oil – which would amount to 40% of the full ration.

The move prompted protests in the Kakuma refugee camp, which hosts 300,000 people, and four refugees were injured in clashes with Kenyan police.

The WFP also said this week that a million people in Somalia could fall into crisis levels of hunger because of conflict, drought and inflation but that it would have to reduce the support it provided because it was $300m short of funding for the next six months.

In a statement on the situation in Somalia, it said: “As humanitarian needs grow, limited funding is resulting in life-saving programmes being reduced or cut altogether. From April, WFP will support 820,000 vulnerable people per month with food and cash assistance – down from a peak of 2.2 million reached monthly in 2024.”

Members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a US government agency promoting economic development in Africa after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.

Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon.

The incident was the latest case of resistance to attempts driven by Trump and Musk to slash the federal workforce by gutting and closing agencies and laying off federal employees.

Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.

In Wednesday’s episode, workers instructed a security guard at USADF’s headquarters to deny the Doge team access when they arrived accompanied by Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered USAid. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.

Staff cited a letter sent by the agency’s chair, Ward Brehm, who was not present at the time, to Doge the previous day making clear that it would not be allowed to enter in his absence.

“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote, according to the Hill, which obtained a copy of the letter.

Brehm also declined to cooperate with Marocco unless he was officially appointed to the agency’s board.

“I will look forward to working with Mr Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote.

“Until these legal requirements are met, Mr Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the foundation’s behalf.”

About 30 workers were in the building when Marocco arrived with a Doge team – described as young men wearing backpacks – intent on carrying out firings based on an executive order issued by Trump on 19 February, the Washington Post reported.

Trump’s order declared USADF and three other agencies – the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States Institute of Peace – as “unnecessary” and subject to elimination.

Wednesday’s standoff followed a similar exchange at the IAF’s headquarters earlier this week.

The workers’ defiant stand comes after Democrats publicly condemned the attempted dismantling of the agency as illegal.

“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” Democratic members of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee wrote in a 24 February letter to Trump.

A USADF official told the Washington Post the terms of its governing statute meant that it did not have to take orders from Marocco.

“It’s explicit in the statute that the agency can only be dissolved by an act of Congress and the president can only be hired and fired by the board,” the official said.

The agency was created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people.

An alarming rise in obesity in Africa has been compared with the HIV epidemic, with stigma and lack of treatment having a disproportionate impact on women.

Almost half of women in Africa will be obese or overweight by the end of the decade, according to a recent study by the World Obesity Federation.

While people in richer countries embrace the use of weight loss jabs to slim, few have any confidence that the groundbreaking medicines will be available in sub-Saharan Africa in the near future.

And treatment for the host of diseases that accompany obesity, including diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, can be equally hard to access.

Dr Nomathemba Chandiwana, who specialises in obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), is chief scientific officer at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in South Africa.

“Obesity feels like HIV but more compressed,” she said. “We’ve got a disease we don’t quite understand, it’s there, we’re not doing much about it. The drugs are kind of there, but not available. Stigma is also an issue. So you can make a lot of parallels.”

In another similarity between the conditions on the African continent, women are more likely than men to be infected with HIV. And while 25% of men in Africa are overweight or obese, for women the figure is 40%. In most other world regions the gap is much smaller, or reversed.

And the trend is accelerating. While 45% of women in Africa will be overweight or obese by 2030, for men the figure is 26%, according to the World Obesity Atlas.

Chandiwana said the question of why obesity was rising faster among women in Africa was complex, and involved multiple intersecting factors.

“Urbanisation and lifestyle shifts play a major role – many African cities lack safe spaces for physical activity, and long working hours, caregiving responsibilities, and safety concerns, etc, make movement harder for women. Unlike men, who may engage in occupational or leisure physical activity, women’s daily routines are becoming more sedentary,” she said.

“HIV and antiretroviral therapy (ART) add another layer. In high HIV-burden settings like South Africa, ART-related weight gain, especially with drugs such as dolutegravir, is becoming more noticeable, disproportionately affecting women.”

Biological factors such as reproductive health, menopause, and differences in cravings, metabolism, genetics and hormones are additional factors, she said.

“It is definitely going to get worse as ultra-processed foods become more ubiquitous, climate change increases and [because of] gender inequity,” said Chandiwana, with women facing more barriers to activities such as exercise because of their other commitments. “We need prevention and treatment targeted specifically at women in South Africa.”

Already, two-thirds of women in South Africa are overweight or obese, the second highest rate on the continent, after Eswatini.

The rates in women could be a warning sign. Research suggests that countries’ experiences of rising obesity typically begin with higher levels in women and higher-income groups before spreading through the population.

Chandiwana said she was excited by the possibilities of the new generation of anti-obesity drugs called GLP-1 receptor agonists, such as Wegovy or Mounjaro, which have been popularised in the west by celebrities and politicians such as Oprah Winfrey and Boris Johnson.

She said she had been about to get US funding for the first trial of semaglutide in women with HIV, shortly before the Trump administration froze most research spending.

“I think these drugs are a gamechanger and also they legitimise obesity as a chronic disease,” she said. “Without treatment, people always look at it as a personal failure. It’s you, you haven’t done enough. But when you have treatment, we’ve got more in our toolbox.”

There is “an equity issue” she said, where patients’ access to the new, “best-in-class drugs” depend on where they live in the world. She said diabetes patients in South Africa are having to return to using insulin in glass vials, rather than the more modern alternative of pens with measured doses.

“It doesn’t matter where you are, there’s a drug that’s available that can help you with your disease. We do have to try the best we can to give people access,” Chandiwana said.

Johanna Ralston, CEO at the World Obesity Federation, said cultural norms and expectations around obesity in some African countries might play a role in making women more vulnerable to obesity. “As is the case in many Caribbean and Middle Eastern countries, it is more culturally acceptable for women to have excess weight, and in some cases is desirable.”

Ralston said: “Gender-responsive action is needed to address these disparities and more research is needed to understand the nuances.”

Brenda Chitindi of the Zambia NCD Alliance agreed that cultural attitudes to obesity were an obstacle to tackling the condition in her country.

“Obesity is a very big challenge in Zambia because we have not taken it seriously. Most of the time we think when you are obese, you eat well – without knowing that it is a disease,” she said.

Speaking at the NCD Alliance Global Forum, a conference for NCD advocates last month, Chitindi said: “The other big challenge is where the [food] industry right now have brought into the country these fast foods. Where a lot of people have been attracted and, ignoring the regional food we have … they rush to these fast foods to show people ‘we are well off, we eat well’, without knowing they contribute to obesity.

“The government is looking at the revenue that they get from this industry, which is a very big challenge as well.”

The latest edition of the World Obesity Atlas assessed countries’ “readiness” to address obesity by looking at factors such as their ability to provide treatment for NCDs, and policies for prevention such as taxes on sugary drinks, and restrictions on marketing unhealthy food to children.

These were lacking in many countries, the report’s authors found. But they warned that a reduction in the number of adults who are overweight or obese will require “dramatic policy interventions”.

Thousands of refugees clashed with police in a Kenyan refugee camp this week after receiving news that their food allocations would be cut because of funding problems.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, confirmed that four refugees and a local government official had been injured when police intervened to stop the protesters at the Kakuma refugee camp on Monday.

Those living in the camp had received a message from the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) confirming that allocations would be cut to 40% of the basic minimum ration.

The camp has 300,000 refugees, mostly from South Sudan but also from Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia.

Aid budgets have been stretched for several years, with the WFP having to cut rations in other emergency zones, but they have been hit further by President Donald Trump’s freeze on US aid spending, which provided more than half of WFP’s funding of $9.7bn (£7.5bn) in 2024.

Protesters in the camp held up signs calling for more food and carried empty cooking pots.

One refugee, Andrew Dafir, received a text telling him his monthly ration would drop from 4kg to 3kg of cereals, while cooking oil and beans had been cut completely, said: “I feel neglected and lost because I have no other way to survive.”

Dafir said what they had been receiving was already very limited after repeated cuts, with the full ration being more than 7kg a month for each person.

A cash payment given to the refugees has increased, from 650 Kenyan shillings (about £4) to 820 shillings to replace the beans and oil no longer included in the rations, but Dafir said the total payment covered barely enough food for a day, let alone for a month.

He said the new level of food aid was not enough to live on, especially for those who did not have any other income to supplement their rations.

He shared a video of scores of people running away from teargas and what sounded like bullets being fired, with a boy being carried away with an injury to his stomach. Dafir said one of his friends was among those hurt.

“I lost my voice, I was so scared,” said Dafir. “We’re being forced to be silent; it seems like no wants to listen to us.”

A group of young refugees based in the camp, Youth Voices in Kakuma, said protesters had spent hours outside the UNHCR offices but when no one came out to listen to their concerns some began trying to climb the fence, prompting the police to step in.

A Kakuma resident named Blax Von, who uploaded videos of the protest on to TikTok, said the tensions had been building for several months, with water supplies being reduced, cash support payments slashed, and refugees required to pay their children’s school fees.

Many of the protesters carried empty pots, while others held signs questioning whether 3kg of cereals was enough. “This is the container they are now using to measure beans and oil and the other one for rice. And this is equivalent for one month for your food,” a South Sudanese refugee, holding an empty cooking pot, told the Associated Press.

“Assume you don’t have another income, it’s only this. Is this enough for you?”

UNHCR said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about the impact of the cuts. It said “government security personnel in Kakuma intervened to contain the situation. Fortunately, there was no loss of life.

“However, at least four refugees and one local government official sustained injuries. UNHCR cannot confirm the use of live rounds during the demonstrations.”

The Social Justice Centre Working Group, a Kenyan civil society organisation, said: “Brutalising those who flee war, persecution and hunger instead of addressing their cries for food and water is the height of state-sponsored cruelty.”

Kipchumba Murkomen, the cabinet secretary at Kenya’s interior ministry, said on Tuesday that the recent aid cuts had had a “sudden and severe” impact on Kenya’s ability to host 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers.

“With the cut in funding for humanitarian assistance programmes by the developed world, the socioeconomic impact on our country will be unbearable. And yet to turn our backs on the most vulnerable people runs counter to our belief in shared humanity. It’s therefore incumbent on developed countries to shoulder the financial burden as we do our bit,” said Murkomen.

Fifa has banned the former Gabon youth-team coach Patrick Assoumou Eyi, known as “Capello”, for life after its adjudicatory chamber found him guilty of committing repeated acts of sexual abuse against multiple players.

Eyi – who left his post as head coach of Gabon’s under-17 team in 2017 – admitted charges of raping, grooming and exploiting young players following allegations that were first reported by the Guardian in 2021. One former player who was coached by Eyi claimed that the coach would lure alleged victims to his home, which he called the “Garden of Eden”.

Fifa provisionally suspended Eyi when the claims were first made in 2021 and its independent ethics committee opened an investigation. It was confirmed on Tuesday that he has been handed a lifetime ban from all football-related activities and fined 1m Swiss francs (£878,000).

“The investigation into Mr Eyi concerns complaints from at least four male football players who accused him of sexual abuse between 2006 and 2021. Most of these incidents occurred while the players were minors,” read a Fifa statement.

“In its decision, the adjudicatory chamber found that Mr Eyi had breached article 24 (Protection of physical and mental integrity) and article 26 (Abuse of position) of the Fifa code of ethics and sanctioned him with a lifetime ban from all football-related activities (administrative, sports or any other) at both national and international level. In addition, a fine in the amount of CHF 1,000,000 has been imposed on Mr Eyi.”

It is understood that Fifa is continuing to investigate allegations that the president, Pierre-Alain Mounguengui, did not report alleged sexual abuse by Eyi and a number of other coaches to Gabon’s authorities. The Guardian reported last January that an independent investigator recommended that he should be immediately suspended.

The Guardian has approached Eyi for comment.

Campaigners have welcomed a court ruling to remove British colonial monuments from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and to rename streets that honour “crooks and historical figureheads”.

In last week’s high court ruling, Justice Musa Ssekaana directed the city authorities to remove the names of British figures from streets, monuments and other landmarks.

They include Maj Gen Henry Edward Colville, an early commissioner of the Uganda protectorate, and Frederick Lugard, a prominent colonial official in Africa with a reputation for cruelty. New names will be found for roads and parks that reflect Uganda’s culture after the ruling, which was the culmination of a five-year campaign.

In 2020, more than 5,800 people signed a petition asking MPs to “decolonise and rename” the dozens of statues and streets honouring colonialists, and last year John Ssempebwa, a human rights activist, filed a lawsuit in Kampala, claiming that roads and parks named by the British during colonial times violated Ugandans’ rights to dignity and freedom from cruel treatment.

Apollo Makubuya, a lawyer and leading campaigner, said: “This ruling represents a significant step forward in the recognition of human dignity and the fight against colonial injustices.

“It is essential to break free from the legacy of colonial exploitation, oppression, and impunity by embracing names that truly reflect Uganda’s independence and cultural identity,” he said.

Kampala’s lord mayor, Erias Lukwago, said he was disappointed that the judge did not give a detailed judgment that addressed historical injustices and detailed those who opposed the British rulers, but added: “I think it’s long overdue for us to decolonise our streets.

“I believe we can have our history, we can keep records, but not celebrate some crooks and historical figureheads that brutalised Ugandans. They need not be celebrated,” he said.

However, Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights lawyer in Kampala, said the court order was a “futile … symbolic” exercise.

“Let’s leave them the way they are, let’s see them, let it be a constant reminder of our past,” he said. “The best way to recommit ourselves to a new path is to remember that path and not re-erase it.

“We cannot engage in a revisionist attempt to try to erase that history. To do so only on the names of streets would be selective. Our history is what it is. We must leave it, we must see it [and] we must remind ourselves of it if we are to move on from it,” he said.

“I think the court’s judgment and process that led to it is a revisionist approach; that it’s engaged in a futile exercise or symbolic exercise to revise our history, which is inextricably linked to the British colonial role in our country.”

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) is closing its southern Africa office in the wake of the Trump administration’s aid cuts.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the office in Johannesburg would close and the WFP would consolidate its southern and east Africa operations into one regional office in Nairobi, Kenya.

The spokesperson said the UN food agency had launched a long-term plan to streamline its structure in 2023, but as “the donor funding outlook becomes more constrained, we have been compelled to accelerate these efforts”.

The spokesperson said food programmes would continue:
“Our commitment to serving vulnerable communities is as strong as ever, and WFP remains committed to ensuring our operations are as effective and efficient as possible in meeting the needs of those facing hunger.”

The WFP did not say how much funding it had lost from USAid, but it received $4.4bn (£3.5bn) in assistance from the US last year, about half its total annual budget and more than four times the amount given by the second biggest donor, Germany.

The Trump administration said last week it was terminating 90% of USAid’s foreign aid contracts because they did not advance America’s national interests, stopping $60bn in spending on humanitarian projects across the world.

Southern Africa was hit by its worst drought in decades last year, destroying crops and putting 27 million people in danger of hunger, according to the WFP. It made a call for $147m in donations to help some of those in need even before Donald Trump started cutting US foreign aid.

The WFP provides food assistance to more than 150 million people in 120 countries, it says. It won the Nobel peace prize in 2020 and its six leaders since 1992 have been Americans, including current executive director Cindy McCain, the widow of the former US senator John McCain.

Few UN agencies have been specific about the impact of the US aid cuts.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration reportedly has cut 3,000 jobs linked to resettlement in the US, and family planning agency UNFPA has estimated that a number of its operations will be affected.

Many UN aid agencies have said they are still assessing the impact and remain unclear about whether some programmes or projects will benefit from waivers that could allow US donations to continue to flow.

Patients at hospitals in the second-largest city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have described how they sustained serious injuries during the chaotic withdrawal of the Congolese army and its allies in the days before Rwanda-backed M23 rebels marched in.

Widespread shooting and looting preceded the arrival of the rebels in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, on 14 February, overwhelming the city’s poorly resourced hospitals.

“I was lying on my bed at home, near Katana,” said 22-year-old Priscilla Nabintu from her bed in Bukavu’s general hospital. “All of a sudden, a bullet hit me [in the shin] and I started bleeding.”

The facility near Lake Kivu was still very busy on Monday. Two blocks had been set aside for people with gunshot and shrapnel injuries.

Mugisho Shalukoma, 20, was recovering from a leg amputation, the result of gunshot wounds. “I felt my foot getting harder and harder,” he said. “I didn’t see the person who shot me. Those around me brought me here.”

Ghislaine Ntakwinja, 41, said she was in her house when unidentified gunmen shot her in her right hand. “Guns were ringing out in the city,” she said, sitting on her bed. “I heard armed men open my house’s door. They had guns. That’s when they shot me.” Her children rushed her to hospital.

As M23 closed in on Bukavu, reports emerged of people collecting weapons and military equipment left by retreating Congolese forces.

Deogracias Chibambo, a human rights activist with the Ça Suffit (That’s Enough) civic engagement group, said weapons had been circulating freely, including among children, causing enormous damage. “There was general panic. Bullets were being fired in many places,” he said.

Last week, the UN human rights office accused M23 rebels of killing three children in Bukavu who were carrying weapons and wearing uniforms from an abandoned Congolese military camp, after they refused to surrender the weapons. M23 denied the accusation, terming it propaganda by the Congolese government.

Esperance Mwamini Birindwa, a nurse with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which operates at the general hospital, said 162 people had been admitted with injuries related to the M23 takeover between 14 and 24 February. Of those with gunshot and shrapnel injuries, three had died.

M23 has made rapid advances this year, drawing in neighbouring armies and raising fears of a regional war.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is facing supply challenges caused by the conflict, hindering its ability to treat wounded people. The organisation’s warehouse in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, was one of many looted and vandalised during fighting in the city last month, with medicine and other items stolen. The fighting has caused logistical challenges, too, disrupting some transport routes.

“Despite all our efforts, evacuations sometimes take longer than expected because of access difficulties,” said ICRC project manager Emmanuel Konin. “Some patients whose lives we could have tried to save are already dead from their injuries.”

Other hospitals in Bukavu have also been overwhelmed by injured people. One had received 42 patients with gunshot and shrapnel wounds within a few days of the fall of Bukavu, said Marcus Bachmann, head of programmes for South Kivu at Médecins Sans Frontières, which is supporting some hospitals in the city to treat the high number of injured people.

“We are closely assessing the situation and exploring ways to scale up our emergency efforts to respond to the humanitarian needs of people in areas around Minova, Bukavu, and Uvira,” he said, referring to areas in South Kivu. “We urge all the parties to the conflict to ensure the protection of civilians, humanitarian workers, and medical infrastructure and personnel in all areas affected by the conflict.”

M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led insurgent groups to operate in the mineral-rich eastern DRC since a 2003 deal, meant to end the wars that had killed 6 million people, mostly from hunger and disease. The group is backed by Rwanda, which says its primary interest is to eradicate fighters linked to the 1994 genocide. The Congolese government and several UN reports say, in fact, Rwanda is using the group to extract and export valuable minerals for use in products such as mobile phones.

The situation in Bukavu remains extremely volatile. On Thursday, at least 13 people were killed and dozens others injured in explosions at a mass rally held by M23 in the city centre. The rebels accused the Congolese authorities of being behind the attack, while Congo’s army said Rwandan troops had fired rockets and grenades into the crowd.

International sanctions, renewed investigations by the international criminal court and Africa-led peace negotiations have failed to halt the advance of the rebels, who captured Goma last month before rapidly advancing south to Bukavu.

Since January, 7,000 people have been killed and almost half a million are without shelter after 90 displacement camps were destroyed in the fighting in eastern Congo, the government said.

The UN refugee agency said on Friday that 60,000 people have fled into neighbouring Burundi in the past fortnight.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said he is concerned about the “arbitrary detention” and health of Boualem Sansal, days after the French-Algerian author began a hunger strike over his imprisonment in Algeria.

On Tuesday, Pen America issued a statement calling for the immediate release of 75-year-old Sansal, noting that “his hunger strike adds to grave concerns for his wellbeing”.

In November, the writer was arrested on national security charges and subsequently hospitalised. A group of prominent writers including Salman Rushdie, Annie Ernaux, Wole Soyinka and Leïla Slimani signed a statement calling for his release.

Macron has spoken out about Sansal’s detention before, telling French ambassadors in January that Algeria was “dishonouring itself” by holding the writer.

His latest comments came on Friday during a speech in Porto, Portugal, in which he said that Sansal’s imprisonment was among the issues that needed settling before confidence between France and Algeria could be fully restored, according to Reuters.

Relations between France and its former colony have become increasingly hostile in recent months over immigration and a sovereignty dispute over Western Sahara, which Algeria has long said should be independent. Last summer, Macron sparked anger in Algiers when he backed Morocco’s plan for the territory to come under Moroccan control.

Sansal’s arrest was linked to comments the writer had made to the far-right French outlet Frontières in which he backed the argument that Morocco’s land was truncated by colonial France in the 19th century to the benefit of what would become Algeria.

Sansal was once an Algerian civil servant, but was driven to become a writer during the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. His books include An Unfinished Business, his first to be translated into English, and 2084, for which he won the Grand Prix du Roman.

Sansal has in recent years become popular with rightwing figures for his position on Islam, with Marine Le Pen calling him a “courageous opponent of Islamism” after his arrest. Sandrine Rousseau – a member of the green party Europe Écologie Les Verts, denounced his imprisonment, but called his views a “form of supremacism”.

“Writers like Boualem Sansal do not belong behind bars,” said Karin Karlekar, Pen America’s director of Writers at Risk, on Tuesday. “Algeria must honour its international obligations, uphold his human rights, and the rights of all detained writers in the country.”

Sweeping notices of termination of funding have been received by organisations working with HIV and Aids across Africa, with dire predictions of a huge rise in deaths as a result.

After the US announced a permanent end to funding for HIV projects, services across the board have been affected, say doctors and programme managers, from projects helping orphans and pregnant women to those reaching transgender individuals and sex workers.

The cuts could result in 500,000 deaths over the next 10 years in South Africa, modelling suggests, while thousands of people are already set to lose their jobs in the coming days.

The US government has announced it will be cutting more than 90% of the contracts of its key development agency, USAid, and slashing $60bn (£48bn) of overseas aid spending.

The Guardian has heard that notices of termination have been sent to organisations in other countries in the region, including Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, as well as with the joint United Nations programme UNAids.

The Elizabeth Glaser Paediatric Aids Foundation said it had received termination notices for three of its projects, which provide HIV treatment for more than 350,000 people in Lesotho, Eswatini and Tanzania. The figure includes more than 10,000 HIV-positive pregnant women, who must continue taking antiretroviral drugs to avoid passing the disease on to their babies.

Dr Lynne Mofenson, a senior adviser at the foundation, said the decision was “a death sentence for mothers and children”.

Many projects had been forced to stop work in late January after the Trump administration announced a 90-day review of foreign aid. A few were then granted temporary waivers to continue on the grounds that they provided life-saving services, before receiving notices on Thursday instructing them to close their doors permanently.

Projects funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), founded by George W Bush in 2003, appear to be particularly affected. In South Africa it funds 17% of the HIV response; in other countries the figure is much higher.

Prof Linda-Gail Bekker, director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town, said: “It is not hyperbole to say that I predict a huge disaster.”

Bekker has worked on modelling suggesting a complete loss of Pepfar funding in South Africa would lead to more than 500,000 extra HIV deaths over a decade.

It comes at a time when scientific breakthroughs, such as the introduction of long-acting injectable prevention drugs, meant many working in the HIV field had hoped an end to the disease might be in sight.

Now, said Bekker, it was likely things would go backwards. South Africa has about 8 million people living with HIV, the highest number globally.

She said she had initially expected the US to target programmes working with key groups of people such as the LGBT+ community, because of the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity initiatives, “but in fact, this has been across the board.

“This is children, this is orphans, vulnerable children, young women and girl programmes. It is generic and across the board.”

It also halts ongoing research, including trials into potential HIV vaccines and new prevention drugs, Bekker said.

US funding had allowed projects to fill gaps in government provision, such as clinics where transgender people or sex workers can seek care without stigma or legal concerns, Bekker said.

Kholi Buthelezi, national coordinator at Sisonke, a sex workers’ organisation, said: “I’ve been having sleepless nights. This blow, it reminded us of back when there was no cure for HIV.”

At a press briefing on the cuts, she and others working on HIV in South Africa called on their government to “step up” and fill the gaps left by the US’s withdrawal.

Pepfar funding has been distributed via USAid and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Programmes with funding from the CDC have not yet been forced to shut, said Dr Kate Rees, a public health medicine specialist at the Anova Health Institute, but said it was too early to conclude that those programmes were safe.

There had already been plans to shift programmes reliant on donors to government funding over the next five years, Rees said, but “now, instead of a careful handover, we’re being pushed over a cliff edge”.

US funding had been embedded in the health system, she said, and so the withdrawal would “be felt by everyone who uses or works in health services”.

Anova has received a termination notice. “Tomorrow we are letting go more than 2,800 people,” Rees said. “That’s counsellors, data capturers, healthcare workers – and these people are not going to find other jobs very easily.”

An uncommon meteorological event unfolded on Tuesday when six named tropical cyclones were active simultaneously in the southern hemisphere, several in close proximity to one another.

Three developed in the south-west Pacific. Severe Tropical Cyclone Alfred formed on 20 February in the Coral Sea to the north-east of Australia, reaching an intensity equivalent to a category 4 hurricane on Thursday with sustained winds of 105mph (170km/h) and gusts at about 140mph.

Alfred is tracking south, moving roughly parallel to the Queensland coast, and warnings have been issued for strong winds and rough seas. Though Alfred is not expected to make landfall, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is monitoring the cyclone as it remains uncertain how close it will pass by the coast.

Farther east in the south-west Pacific, there were two shorter-lived storms, Rae and Seru, which reached a maximum intensity equivalent to a category 2 hurricane. Tropical Cyclone Rae developed just north of Fiji on 22 February before travelling south across the island. Tropical Cyclone Seru formed on 24 February over the southernmost Solomon Islands, travelling southwards and passing to the east of Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

While Seru remained offshore, Rae caused significant damage to some Fijian islands, owing to a combination of flood waters from heavy rain, gusts of about 100mph, and huge waves.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Bianca, which formed in the Timor Sea to the north-west of Australia, was active between 18 and 27 February in the south-east Indian Ocean, during which time it travelled west before veering south, allowing it to curve around the continent without making landfall. This cyclone had a peak intensity equivalent to a category 3 hurricane.

And in the south-west Indian Ocean, two more cyclones are bracketing Madagascar, both of which developed on Monday. The category 3-equivalent Intense Tropical Cyclone Garance formed to the north-east of Madagascar and travelled south. After passing to the west of Mauritius, Garance will affect the French island of Réunion on Friday, with 120mph gusts and up to 600mm of rain.

Meanwhile, the category 1-equivalent Severe Tropical Storm Honde formed in the Mozambique channel and travelled south-east, where it is skirting the southern tip of Madagascar.

Though infrequent, it is far from unusual for this many named storms to exist concurrently. A far rarer occurrence is for this many to occur within a single ocean basin.

The Pacific Ocean has recorded six simultaneous named storms on just one occasion, in August 1974, while the Atlantic record is five, set in September 1971.

The Trump administration has terminated its funding of the joint United Nations program on HIV/Aids, known as UNAids, delivering another devastating blow to the global fight against the disease.

The notice that US funding of UNAids is being cut off is the latest move by the administration to staunch American involvement in life-saving health and anti-poverty programs around the world. It was issued by Peter Marocco, a Trump loyalist who is spearheading the evisceration of the US overseas aid program through USAid.

Marocco said in a letter to UNAids that its funding was being terminated “for the convenience of the US government”. The action was made “for alignment with agency priorities and national interest”, he said.

The Trump administration’s funding freeze on foreign assistance has already wreaked havoc on HIV treatment programs worldwide. A new UN report has revealed the impact of the cuts on 55 different countries.

Before the funding freeze, the US government was responsible for two-thirds of all international financing for HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries. Much of it came through the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) which was founded by George W Bush in 2003 and which has financed about 70% of the global Aids response.

The countries most heavily dependent on financial support from Washington for the fight against HIV/Aids are among the most stricken parts of the planet. They include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti.

Trump’s initial attack on foreign assistance led in the opening days of the administration to a total freeze on funding overseas. That was softened by a 1 February waiver that allowed some life-saving care and services to prevent mother-to-child transmission to resume, allowing 20 million people living with HIV to continue receiving medication.

Despite the waiver, confusion and a sporadic flow of aid has already caused widespread suffering. Now, the new cut in funds to UNAids, which operates in 70 countries, will probably to add to the devastation.

“UNAids has received reports from 55 countries experiencing disruptions in their HIV responses due to the US foreign aid pause,” the executive director of the agency, Winnie Byanyima, said on social media.

“Any reduction could severely disrupt lifesaving prevention programs, risking new infections and reversing progress to end Aids.”

The UN has reported the almost total collapse of services in Côte d’Ivoire since the funding freeze began. US programs had brought life-saving help to 85% of the 265,000 people living with HIV in the country.

The initial funding freeze led to a complete shutdown of services. Since the waiver was introduced, most US-funded HIV-prevention services for people at the greatest risk of infection remain closed.

Several people have been killed and dozens more injured after blasts at a mass rally held by the M23 group in Bukavu, the city in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo captured by the rebels earlier this month.

Footage posted on social media showed people fleeing the scene. In another, bloodied bodies lay on the ground, and injured people were being carried away.

A crowd of thousands were present for the rally, which took place at Independence Square in the centre of the city, the capital of South Kivu province and the second-largest in eastern DRC.

Among the rebel leaders present was Corneille Nangaa, the head of the Congo River Alliance, a coalition of militias that includes M23. They were were leaving the podium when two blasts rocked the scene, a journalist told the Associated Press.

Nangaa told Reuters by phone that the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, had ordered the attack, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from the government. Nangaa said that he was not wounded and other senior members of the rebel grouping were safe.

Bukavu is one of two key cities in the mineral-rich eastern DRC that M23 has captured this year. Last month, it seized Goma, the largest city in the region.

The M23 advance is the gravest escalation in more than a decade of the long-running conflict in eastern DRC, rooted in the spillover of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and the struggle for control of Congo’s vast minerals resources.

The Rwandan-backed M23 is among more than 100 armed groups fighting Congolese forces in the region, which borders Rwanda and Uganda. It is made up of Tutsis who left the Congolese army more than 10 years ago.

The DRC says Rwanda is directing the group in order to profit from the region’s mineral wealth. UN experts say Kigali is supporting the rebel effort with thousands of its own troops. Earlier this month the Guardian reported that hundreds of Rwandan troops had died in DRC in recent offensives.

Until recently Rwanda had denied backing the M23 group, though in recent months it has been more vague, saying fighting near the border threatens its security. It still denies it has a troop presence in its neighbour.

M23 has said it is trying to protect Tutsis and Congolese people of Rwandan origin from discrimination, but analysts says these claims are pretexts for Rwanda’s involvement.

In January, M23 started making renewed advances in eastern DRC, capturing swathes of territory as it fought against the Congolese army and allied forces.

The conflict has exacerbated the humanitarian situation in the region, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands. About 7,000 people have died in fighting, the DRC’s prime minister, Judith Suminwa, said on Monday.

The conflict has also pushed people out of the country. More than 40,000 people, mostly women and children, have fled to Burundi this month, including more than 9,000 in a single day.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

King Mohammed VI has urged his fellow Moroccans not to slaughter sheep for upcoming Eid al-Adha festivities as the country grapples with dwindling herds due to a six-year drought.

The request was delivered on Wednesday by the minister of Islamic affairs, Ahmed Toufiq, who read a letter on the monarch’s behalf on the state-run Al Aoula TV channel. He cited economic hardship and the climate crisis as reasons for the rising prices of livestock and sheep shortage in the north African state.

“Performing it in these difficult circumstances will cause real harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited income,” the king, who is also Morocco’s highest religious authority, wrote in the letter.

Eid al-Adha, which this year takes place in early June, is an annual “feast of sacrifice” in which Muslims slaughter livestock to honour a passage of the Qur’an in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who intervened and replaced the child with a sheep.

It is a major holiday for millions of Muslims around the world, with traditions so embedded that families have been known to take out loans to buy sheep.

Their purchasing power has been reduced, especially in many parts of north Africa, where an enduring drought has intensified inflation in recent years. The price of the preferred domestic sheep can often exceed monthly household earnings in Morocco, where the monthly minimum wage is 3,000 dirhams (£240).

Prices have become so exorbitant that 55% of families surveyed by the Moroccan Center for Citizenship, an NGO, last year said they struggled to cover the costs of buying sheep and the utensils needed to prepare them.

The country has one of the highest red meat consumption rates in Africa and has lost a third of its national cattle and sheep population since 2016. In its 2025 budget, Morocco suspended import duties and a value-added tax on cattle and sheep to help stabilise domestic prices.

On 20 February, the government announced a deal to import up to 100,000 sheep from Australia. It has previously imported cattle from Brazil and Uruguay.

The king’s request is the first time in 29 years that Morocco has asked citizens to forgo holiday feasting. King Hassan II, Mohammed VI’s predecessor and father, issued similar decrees three times throughout his reign, during wartime, drought and when the International Monetary Fund mandated an end to food subsidies in the country.

Activist groups including trade unions have protested against the costs of basic food items and decried the government’s efforts to curb rising prices as insufficient.