Musings From Abroad

Dozens dead as wildfires force people to flee into the sea

At least 74 people have died in the worst wildfires to hit Greece in more than a decade, with some residents forced to flee into the sea to escape the advancing flames, CNN reports

Published

6 years ago

July 25, 2018

Africa News Watch

At least 74 people have died in the worst wildfires to hit Greece in more than a decade, with some residents forced to flee into the sea to escape the advancing flames, CNN reports.

Residents told of horrifying scenes as flames engulfed a seaside village, where the only way out for some was to run for the water.

Boats were mobilized in a hurriedly-organized rescue operation as the flames took hold on Monday night. Reuters reported that 696 people were picked up from beaches and 19 from the sea. Rescuers also retrieved four bodies from the sea.

The Greek fire service confirmed that 25 people were found dead close to the seaside resort village of Mati as they tried to escape the fires.

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Musings From Abroad

French army begins Chad pullout

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Just two weeks after local authorities said they were terminating their defence collaboration, the French army announced that jets deployed in the capital N’Djamena had returned home on Tuesday, marking the beginning of France’s military departure from Chad.

The government of Chad, a crucial Western partner in the war against Islamic jihadists in the area, unexpectedly terminated its defence cooperation treaty with France on November 28, a decision that caught French authorities off guard.

It is still unclear how the evacuation will be executed and if any French forces will remain in the central African country at all, even after the first Mirage aircraft returned to their base in eastern France on Tuesday.

“It marks the beginning of the return of French equipment stationed in N’Djamena,” Army spokesperson Colonel Guillaume Vernet said.

Due to anti-French sentiment and military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, France has already withdrawn its troops from those West African nations.

Decades of French military participation in the Sahel area came to an end with the departure from Chad, and more recently, French military operations against Islamist extremists in the region were discontinued.

There are still around 1,000 French soldiers in Chad. Vernet stated that it would still take several weeks for the two nations to establish a schedule for reducing its activities.

Musings From Abroad

Court documents show Meta contractor overlooked Ethiopia rebel threats to moderators

Published

1 day ago

December 10, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

New evidence cited by Reuters suggests that a contractor employed by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, overlooked threats against content moderators by Ethiopian rebels during a case contesting the removal of dozens of moderators in Kenya.

Last year, 185 content moderators sued Meta and two contractors for losing their positions with Sama, a Kenyan business that moderated Facebook material, for seeking to form a union.

After Facebook switched contractors, they were barred from applying for the same jobs at Majorel.

Foxglove, a British non-profit helping Ethiopian moderators, submitted court filings on Dec. 4 alleging that Sama ignored their accusations that OLA rebels had targeted them for deleting their videos.

In the petition obtained by Reuters, the moderators said Sama accused them “of creating a false account and manufacturing” the threatening messages before agreeing to a probe and transferring one of the rebels’ officially named moderators to a safe house.

In his statement, Moderator Abdikadir Alio Guyo said that OLA had threatened “content moderators who were constantly pulling down their graphic Facebook Posts.”

“They told us to stop removing their content from Facebook or else we would face dire consequences,” he said, adding that his supervisor dismissed his concerns.
In his declaration, another moderator, Hamza Diba Tubi, stated that OLA sent him a message with the names and addresses of both himself and his coworkers.

“Since I received that threatening message, I have lived in so much fear of even visiting my family members in Ethiopia,” he said.

After peace negotiations in Tanzania in 2023 failed to end a decades-old conflict, the government of Oromiya, Ethiopia’s biggest province, accused OLA rebels of killing “many civilians” in assaults.