Nigerian President Bola Tinubu is calling for an investigation into a weekend military drone attack that killed 85 people.

The deadly attack occurred in the village of Tudun Biri in northern Kaduna state Sunday during a celebration of a Muslim holiday.  

Dozens of villagers were also wounded in the attack.  

President Tinubu’s office issued a statement expressing his grief over the incident, which he called “very unfortunate, disturbing and painful.”

The Nigerian air force has denied any involvement in Sunday’s attack.  

Nigeria’s military have used drones in their battle against Islamic extremists who have waged an insurgent campaign in the country’s northeast and northwest for several decades.  

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. 
…

The United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA, says it is working with other humanitarian agencies to help mitigate and respond to increasing incidents of gender-based violence in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

 

The U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator for the DRC, Suzanna Tkalec, said at a briefing Monday in Washington that women and girls in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri continue to be exposed to alarming rates of gender-based violence due to the resurgence of violence between militant groups and government forces. 

Tkalec said a recent report from the aid organization Doctors Without Borders found that some 90,000 women and girls had sought medical assistance after being assaulted and raped this year. The report said those who came forward likely represent only a fraction of the total number of victims.

Tkalec says survivors may be unable to reach lifesaving gender-based violence services or report their abuse, out of fear of stigmatization by their communities or retaliation by perpetrators. 

“A lot of this is really, due to the extreme vulnerability of women and girls,” Tkalec said.

She says OCHA’s ability to help is largely inadequate because its 2023 humanitarian response plan is only 38% funded.

“Because there is always a competition among the new crises that arise, the DRC keeps falling down the line of international crisis that need attention,” Tkalec said.
…

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed sexual transmission of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time as the country experiences its biggest outbreak, a worrying development that African scientists warn could make it more difficult to stop the disease.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the U.N. health agency said a resident of Belgium traveled to Congo in March and tested positive for mpox, or monkeypox, shortly afterward. The WHO said the individual “identified himself as a man who has sexual relations with other men” and that he had gone to several underground clubs for gay and bisexual men.

Among his sexual contacts, five later tested positive for mpox, the WHO said.

“This is the first definitive proof of sexual transmission of monkeypox in Africa,” said Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist who sits on several WHO advisory groups. “The idea that this kind of transmission could not be happening here has now been debunked.”

Mpox has been endemic in parts of central and west Africa for decades, where it mostly jumped into humans from infected rodents and caused limited outbreaks. Last year, epidemics triggered mainly by sex among gay and bisexual men in Europe hit more than 100 countries. The WHO declared the outbreak as a global emergency, and it has caused about 91,000 cases to date.

The WHO noted there were dozens of discrete clubs in Congo where men have sex with other men, including members who travel to other parts of Africa and Europe. The agency described the recent mpox outbreak as unusual and said it highlighted the risk the disease could spread widely among sexual networks.

The WHO added that the mpox outbreak this year in Congo, which has infected more than 12,500 people and killed about 580, also marked the first time the disease has been identified in the capital, Kinshasa, and in the conflict-ridden province of South Kivu. Those figures are roughly double the mpox toll in 2020, making it Congo’s biggest outbreak, the WHO said.

Virologist Tomori said that even those figures were likely an underestimate and had implications for the rest of Africa, given the continent’s often patchy disease surveillance.

“What’s happening in Congo is probably happening in other parts of Africa,” he said. “Sexual transmission of monkeypox is likely established here, but [gay] communities are hiding it because of the draconian [anti-LGBTQ+] laws in several countries.”

He warned that driving people at risk for the virus underground would make the disease harder to curb.

The mpox virus causes fever, chills, rash and lesions on the face or genitals. Most people recover within several weeks without requiring hospitalization.

The WHO said the risk of mpox spreading to other countries in Africa and globally “appears to be significant,” adding that there could be “potentially more severe consequences” than the worldwide epidemic last year.

Tomori lamented that while the mpox outbreaks in Europe and North America prompted mass immunization campaigns among affected populations, no such plans were being proposed for Africa.

“Despite the thousands of cases in Congo, no vaccines have arrived,” he said. Even after mpox epidemics subsided in the West, few shots or treatments were made available for Africa.

“We have been saying for years in Africa that monkeypox is a problem,” he said. “Now that sexual transmission has been confirmed here, this should be a signal to everyone to take it much more seriously.”
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Double-amputee Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was granted parole Friday, 10 years after shooting his girlfriend through a toilet door at his home in South Africa in a killing that jolted the world. He will be released from prison on January 5 but will be constantly monitored by parole officials for five years until his sentence expires, the Department of Corrections said.

Pistorius’ parole will come with other conditions, Department of Corrections spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said outside of the prison where Pistorius has been incarcerated in the South African capital, Pretoria.

Pistorius will not be allowed to leave the area of Pretoria without permission from authorities. He will also attend a program to deal with anger issues and another program on violence against women. He will have to perform community service.

“Parole does not mean the end of the sentence. It is still part of the sentence. It only means the inmate will complete the sentence outside a correctional facility,” Nxumalo said. “What will happen is that Mr. Pistorius will be allocated a monitoring official. This official will work with him until his sentence expires.”

Nxumalo said the monitoring official would need to be notified of any major events in Pistorius’ life, including if he wants to move or get a job.

“We have to be informed of each and every activity,” Nxumalo said.

Pistorius will not wear a monitoring bracelet as that is not part of South African parole procedure, Nxumalo said. Pistorius’ sentence will expire on December 5, 2029.

The decision to grant parole was made at a hearing at the prison earlier Friday.

Pistorius, who turned 37 this week, has been in jail since late 2014 for the Valentine’s Day 2013 killing of model Reeva Steenkamp, although he was released for a period of house arrest in 2015 while one of the numerous appeals in his case was heard. He was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison.

Serious offenders in South Africa must serve at least half of their sentence to be eligible for parole, which Pistorius has done.

Pistorius was at the height of his fame and one of the world’s most admired athletes when he killed Steenkamp. He shot her multiple times in the bathroom of his Pretoria villa in the predawn hours with his licensed 9-millimeter pistol.

Pistorius’ parole hearing was his second in the space of eight months. He was wrongly ruled ineligible for early release at a hearing in March. That was due to an error made by an appeals court over when the sentence officially started.

Pistorius was initially convicted of culpable homicide — a charge comparable to manslaughter — for killing Steenkamp. That conviction was overturned, and he was convicted of murder after an appeal by prosecutors. They also appealed against an initial sentence of six years for murder, and Pistorius was ultimately sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison.

Pistorius testified at his murder trial that he killed Steenkamp by mistake when he fired four times through the door thinking she was a dangerous intruder hiding in his bathroom in the middle of the night. Prosecutors argued that Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and reality TV star, had fled to the toilet cubicle during a late-night argument and that Pistorius killed her in a rage.

Pistorius was eventually convicted of murder on a legal principle known as dolus eventualis, which means he acted with extreme recklessness and should have known that whoever was behind the door would likely be killed. It’s comparable to third-degree murder.

Steenkamp’s father, Barry Steenkamp, died in September. Her mother, June Steenkamp, did not oppose Pistorius’ parole but said in a statement before the hearing that she did not believe Pistorius had been fully rehabilitated and was still lying about the killing.

Rob Matthews, a South African man whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered in 2004 and who became a Steenkamp family friend, read out June Steenkamp’s statement. She said she was not opposing Pistorius’ parole and didn’t attend the hearing because “I simply cannot muster the energy to face him again at this stage.”

Nevertheless, “I do not believe Oscar’s version that he thought the person in the toilet was a burglar,” June Steenkamp said in the statement. “In fact, I do not know anybody who does. My dearest child screamed for her life. … I believe he knew it was Reeva.”

While out on parole, Pistorius is expected to live at his uncle’s luxurious mansion in a wealthy Pretoria suburb, where he stayed during his murder trial.

There have been only occasional glimpses of Pistorius’ life behind bars. His father has said he has been holding Bible classes for fellow prisoners, while a criminologist who worked with him said he had been driving a tractor at a part of the prison where vegetables are grown.

Pistorius’ lawyers have said he has been a “model prisoner.” There have been flashes of trouble, though, including an altercation Pistorius had with another inmate over a prison telephone that left him requiring medical treatment.

Pistorius killed Steenkamp just months after he had become the first double-amputee to compete at the Olympics. He was also a multiple Paralympic sprinting champion and one of sport’s most marketable figures, having overcome the amputation of both his legs below the knee as a baby to run on specially designed carbon-fiber blades. He was known as the “Blade Runner.”

At his sensational trial, prosecutors argued there was another side to Pistorius’ life that involved guns and angry confrontations with others. Pistorius was also found guilty of a second charge of recklessly firing a gun in a restaurant.
…

Authorities in several West African countries are trying to manage their huge diphtheria outbreaks, including in Nigeria where a top health official said Thursday that millions are being vaccinated to cover wide gaps in immunity against the disease.

At least 573 people out of the 11,640 diagnosed with the disease in Nigeria have died since the current outbreak started in December 2022, though officials estimate the toll — now on the decline because of treatment efforts — could be much higher across states unable to detect many cases.

In Niger, 37 people had died out of the 865 cases as of October, while Guinea has reported 58 deaths out of 497 since its outbreak started in June.

“As far as the history that I am aware of, this is the largest outbreak that we have had,” Ifedayo Adetifa, head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, told The Associated Press.

The highly contagious bacterial infection has been reported in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states so far.

A major driver of the high rate of infection in the region has been a historically wide vaccination gap, the French medical organization Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said in a statement on Tuesday.

In Nigeria, only 42% of children under 15 years old are fully protected from diphtheria, according to a government survey, while Guinea has a 47% immunization rate — both far below the 80-85% rate recommended by the World Health Organization to maintain community protection.

The fate of the affected countries is worsened by the global shortages of the diphtheria vaccine as demand has increased to respond to outbreaks, MSF said.

“We’re not seeing vaccination happen, not at the scale that is needed,” said Dr. Dagemlidet Tesfaye Worku, emergency medical program manager for MSF in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. “What is needed is a truly massive scale-up of vaccination, as soon as possible.”

The Nigerian government is ramping up vaccination for targeted populations while assisting states to boost their capacity to detect and manage cases, said Adetifa, the Nigeria CDC head.

But several states continue to struggle, including Kano, which accounts for more than 75% of cases in Nigeria but has only two diphtheria treatment centers, according to Abubakar Labaran Yusuf, the state’s top health official.

“Once people have to travel or move significant distances to access treatment, that becomes a challenge,” Adetifa said.
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Niger’s military ruler General Abdourahamane Tiani on Thursday arrived in Mali to meet his counterpart Colonel Assimi Goita in his first international visit since seizing power in July, an AFP journalist noted.   

Niger’s neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso — which are ruled by military leaders who seized power in 2020 and 2022, respectively — have pledged solidarity to Niger’s coup leaders.   

The three Sahel countries in September signed a pact that includes provisions for mutual defense in the event of an attack on the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of any of the countries.   

They also plan to strengthen economic ties.   

The regimes are also united in the fight against jihadism in their countries.   

Tiani is due to stay a few hours in Mali’s capital Bamako and meet Goita for a “friendship and working” visit, the Malian presidency said.   

Shortly after taking power, Tiani pledged to return Niger to civilian rule within three years.    

Mali, meanwhile, has indefinitely postponed a presidential election that was scheduled for early 2024.   

Mali plans to host ministers from the three countries for several meetings in the coming weeks with the aim of ironing out the operational details of the new Sahel alliance, it said in a statement Thursday. 

 
…

First, some families fled drought and violence. Now they say they have nowhere to hide from intense flooding as rainfall exacerbated by the weather phenomenon El Nino pummels large parts of Somalia.

Among the worst hit towns is the densely populated Beledweyne, where the Shabelle River has burst its banks, destroyed many homes and caused thousands to flee to higher ground near the border with Ethiopia.

Hakima Mohamud Hareed, a mother of four including one who is disabled, said her family constantly looks for shelter.

The family recently moved to Beledweyne, fleeing battles between the extremist group al-Shabab and Somali government forces. “We left our home in search of safety and stability, but little did we know that we would end up facing another calamity,” she said by phone.

In the displacement camp of Kutiimo in Beledweyne, the floods destroyed the family’s small, tattered tent. Wind lashes the damp and flimsy fabric.

“The floods washed away all our belongings, so we were left only with our lives,” she said. “It was a traumatic experience for all of us.”

They are not alone. According to the humanitarian group Save the Children, the flooding has forced an estimated 250,000 people, or 90% of Beledweyne’s population, out of their homes.

Somalia’s federal government declared a state of emergency in October after extreme weather exacerbated by El Nino destroyed homes, roads and bridges.

An El Nino is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts weather patterns across the globe, often by moving the airborne paths for storms. It its hardest in December through February. Scientists believe climate change is making El Nino stronger.

Many parts of Somalia, as well as in neighboring Horn of Africa nations Kenya and Ethiopia, are still receiving torrential rainfall. At least 130 people have died in the three countries in what aid agencies have described as a rare flooding phenomenon.

The U.N.-backed Somali Water and Land Information Management project has warned of “a flood event of a magnitude statistically likely only once in 100 years,” the U.N. food agency said in a recent statement.

Some 1.6 million people in Somalia could be affected by flooding events in the rainy season lasting until December, it said.

Beledweyne, in the central region of Hiran, may be the most devastated community. As floodwaters swept through, homes were washed away.

Hakima said her family may be safe from flooding in their camp, but they are hungry and desperate for warm shelter.

“We ask our Somali brothers and sisters to help us get out of this situation, as we are struggling to survive,” she said.

Mukhtar Moalim, the owner of a retail shop, described frantic attempts to save his property in Beledweyne’s market after the river burst its banks. He and a relative swam towards the shop to try to prevent the water from flowing in, putting concrete blocks against the door.

But the water level keeps rising, also threatening their residence on the floor above the shop from which they monitor the destruction.

At least 53 people have been confirmed killed by flooding across Somalia, said Hassan Issee, who manages emergency operations at the Somalia Disaster Management Agency.

“The situation is grave, and we are doing our best to provide relief to the affected people,” he said.

Mogadishu, the Somali capital, has also been affected. The city’s main streets, including the road to the airport, have flooded.

Speaking on Wednesday in the Dollow district of Gedo region, where many families have been displaced by flooding, Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre urged the international community to help.

“We are doing our best, but we need more support,” he said.
…

Political analysts and opposition politicians in Africa accuse China of undermining the spread of democracy in the region by propping up entrenched ruling parties and promoting what Beijing sees as the advantages of one-party rule.

The beneficiaries in many cases are former liberation movements that won struggles against colonial and white-minority rule decades ago, often with Chinese support. Now organized as governing political parties, they have stayed in power ever since, often while accused of stifling any opposition.

A major instrument of Chinese influence is a $40 million political training school based in Tanzania and jointly established last year by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and six southern African former liberation movements.

Each of the six nations participating in the school — Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola — has been ruled by the same party since independence.

Promoting ‘weiwen’

“The CCP capitalized on an opportunity to relocate some of its political and ideological programs to Africa,” China-Africa scholar Paul Nantulya said of the school in a recently published paper for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

“The six FLMSA parties are focused on supporting one another to preserve their rule against perceived threats,” Nantulya explained. “The CCP term for this is ‘weiwen,’ meaning ‘stability maintenance’ or ‘regime survival.’

“The Nyerere Leadership School is the first political school the CCP has built overseas, a bold move by a party that often denies that it promotes its political system abroad. The school enables the CCP to proselytize and methodically share its governance model,” Nantulya continued.

“The CCP hopes to gain a return on investment as the school gives it a permanent home for year-round interactions with each party’s new recruits and senior party cadres. This puts it in an advantageous position to shape the African liberation parties’ China friendly policies and long-term influence.”

China’s position

China denies it plays a role in keeping ruling parties in power.

“We don’t interfere in the African countries’ pursuit for a development path that fits their national conditions. We don’t interfere, nor impose our own will on Africa,” wrote Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington in response to VOA’s inquiry.

VOA also asked whether China engages equally with political opposition parties in Africa.

“When it comes to party-to-party relationship, the Communist Party of China is ready to deepen interactions with political parties and organizations of all countries, including those in Africa. We seek shared views and expand shared interests,” Liu said.

The United States also provides training in its model of governance to foreign political parties through the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, whose website says it is dedicated to fostering democratic institutions “including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations” while supporting “human rights, an independent media, and the rule of law.”

But China itself is a one-party state, and Ray Hartley, research director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a Johannesburg-based policy think tank, said the Tanzania school’s existence is problematic.

“It is concerning that this particular school is for leaders of selected ‘liberation movements’ only, especially since it teaches the doctrine that the party must be all powerful and trump the judiciary.”

“In Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania, these liberation movement governments have been in power for decades and have not hesitated to undercut democratic processes to keep it that way,” Hartley added.

Ruling party and the opposition

With some notable exceptions such as South Africa’s African National Congress party, Nantulya said many former liberation parties “have been largely intolerant of opposition challenges and have employed wide ranging measures to stifle, constrain and even dismantle opposition parties.”

One example is Zimbabwe, which has been governed by former liberation movement ZANU-PF since 1980, and whose elections this year were marred by widespread irregularities, according to observers.

While many Western nations expressed concern over the Zimbabwean polls, Beijing congratulated the winner, the ruling party’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

“It’s a cause for concern for us in Zimbabwe and in Africa in general especially in view of the ‘no questions asked’ policy on the Chinese in their engagement with Africa, their tendency to view Africa as a dumping site and of course undermining human rights democracy transparency in favor of errant regimes,” said Promise Mkwananzi, spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Citizen’s Coalition for Change (CCC).

His party’s members have been jailed, tortured and killed while mounting a challenge to the regime.

“It leaves opposition parties with no choice but to question the motives of the CCP in Africa. We believe that the CCP must have principled, non-partisan approaches to African countries and not blindly side and even aid ruling parties to rig elections violate human rights and undermine democratic entrenchment in Africa,” Mkwananzi added.

Zimbabwe’s governing party, ZANU-PF did not respond to a request for comment.

Change of guard?

However, historical friendships don’t mean China isn’t able to adapt to changes on the continent when necessary.

What happens to a ruling party when it loses an election or is removed from power is telling, Nantulya told VOA. He uses Zambia as an example, because it has had several changes of power and its former liberation movement lost to the opposition again in 2021 polls.

Zambia’s former liberation party is not part of the leadership academy in Tanzania, and Nantulya noted, “I think the Communist Party of China does not want to embarrass or complicate its relationship with Zambia. It has a policy of cultivating whoever is in office.”

He points to the fact that the CCP has been wooing new Zambian leader Hakainde Hichilema.

Likewise, in some countries in Africa, where things are less stable or specific political parties are less securely entrenched, Nantulya noted Beijing does cultivate relationships across the political spectrum, giving the examples of Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

However, it’s different “when a political party program is only training ruling parties and helping them to entrench their stay in office,” he said.
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Kenya’s Health Ministry has rolled out a digital health information system to help workers diagnose patients and store their health records. Mohammed Yusuf reports from a village in western Kenya, where hospitals have recorded an increase in people seeking medical assistance since the deployment of the system
…

Political veteran Joseph Boakai was on Monday declared the winner of Liberia’s presidential election, beating incumbent George Weah, electoral authorities said after completing the ballot count.

Boakai won with 50.64 percent of the vote, against 49.36 percent of the vote for former international football star Weah, National Electoral Commission president Davidetta Browne Lansanah told reporters.

Boakai won by a margin of just 20,567 votes.

Weah had already conceded the election on Friday evening, based on the results of more than 99.98 percent of polling stations. 

The outgoing president won praise from abroad on Monday for conceding and promoting a non-violent transition in a region marred by coups.

“Liberians have once again demonstrated that democracy is alive in the ECOWAS region and that change is possible through peaceful means,” the Economic Community of West African States said in a statement.

But hours after Boakai’s victory was announced, a car plowed into a crowd of supporters outside his party’s headquarters, injuring at least 16 people, police said. His party said at least 10 people were killed in the incident.

Since 2020, ECOWAS states have seen abrupt regime changes with military forces seizing power in four of the 15 member countries: Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger. 

The election six years ago of Weah — the first African footballer to win both FIFA’s World Player of the Year trophy and the Ballon d’Or — had sparked high hopes of change in Liberia, which is still reeling from back-to-back civil wars and the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic.

But critics have accused his government of corruption and him of failing to keep a promise to improve the lives of the poorest. 

While his party lost, “Liberia has won,” Weah had said on the radio. 

Weah said he had spoken to the man he called the “president-elect” to congratulate him and urged his supporters to accept the election result.

“This is a time for graciousness in defeat,” he said, adding, “Our time will come again.”

The African Union sent its congratulations to Boakai on Monday. 

AU chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat also called on “all parties to continue to display maturity and embrace dialogue to consolidate democracy.”

U.S. President Joe Biden also sent congratulations to Boakai, while praising Weah for “respecting the will of the people and putting patriotism above politics.”

‘Defied the stereotype’

The ECOWAS bloc said that the post-election phase was “crucial” and called on “the people of Liberia to maintain and safeguard peace and security.”

However, the NEC head said that on Friday, the commission had received two appeals from Weah’s party concerning the conduct of the election in Nimba County. 

The commission has 30 days to investigate and reach a decision, she said. 

Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who led a mediation mission for the election, said he was “deeply pleased with the successful outcome of the democratic process,” in comments posted on X, formerly Twitter. 

He went on to congratulate Boakai, urging him “to be magnanimous in victory and seek to continue the efforts to unite” Liberia. 

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is a heavyweight in the West African bloc, commended Weah’s concession, saying it had averted any form of socio-political crisis. 

“He has defied the stereotype that peaceful transitions of power are untenable in West Africa,” Tinubu said. 

Several presidential elections in the region are upcoming in 2024, including polls in Senegal, Ghana and Mauritania, as well as military-ruled Mali and Burkina Faso.
…

Oscar Pistorius will have a second chance at parole at a hearing Friday after he was wrongly ruled ineligible for early release from prison in March.

South Africa’s department of corrections said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that a parole board will consider the former Olympic runner’s case again this week and decide “whether the inmate is suitable or not for social integration.”

Pistorius, a world-famous double-amputee athlete who broke barriers by competing on carbon-fiber running blades at the 2012 London Olympics, has been in prison since late 2014 for the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, an offense comparable to manslaughter, for shooting Steenkamp multiple times through a closed toilet cubicle door in his home in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the predawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013.

His conviction was upgraded to murder, and he was ultimately sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison after a series of appeals by prosecutors. Serious offenders in South Africa must serve at least half their sentence before they are eligible for parole.

Pistorius’ case and his parole eligibility have been complicated by those appeals by prosecutors, who first challenged his culpable homicide conviction and then a sentence of six years for murder, which they called shockingly lenient.

The Supreme Court of Appeal eventually ruled in 2017 that Pistorius should serve South Africa’s minimum sentence of 15 years for murder but considered the year and seven months he had already served for culpable homicide when it delivered the 13 years and five months sentence.

However, the court made an error by not counting another period Pistorius had served while his murder sentence was being appealed, meaning he was in fact eligible for parole in March when he was told at his first hearing that he would only be eligible in August 2024.

Pistorius’ lawyers took his case to the country’s apex Constitutional Court. The decision to give Pistorius another parole hearing Friday is effectively an admission of the appeal court’s error.

Pistorius is not guaranteed to be granted early release. A parole board takes a number of factors into account, including his conduct and disciplinary record in prison, his mental health and the likelihood of him committing another crime.

He could be released on full parole or placed on day parole, where he would be allowed to live and work in the community but have to return to prison at night.

Pistorius was once one of the world’s most admired athletes and one of sports’ most heartwarming stories. He was born with a congenital condition that led to his legs being amputated below the knee when he was a baby, but he took up track and won multiple Paralympic titles on his running blades. He is the only double amputee to run at the Olympics.

Known as the “Blade Runner,” he was at the height of his fame when he killed Steenkamp months after the London Olympics. At his murder trial, he claimed he shot Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, by mistake with his licensed 9 mm pistol because he believed she was a dangerous intruder hiding in his bathroom in the middle of the night.

Pistorius will turn 37 Wednesday and hasn’t been seen for nearly a decade, although there have been occasional glimpses of his time in prison.

He sustained an injury in an altercation with another inmate over a prison telephone in 2017. A year earlier, he received treatment for injuries to his wrists, which his family denied were a result of him harming himself and said were caused by him falling in his cell.
…

Mali is experiencing a severe electricity crisis that analysts say will have dire economic consequences. For the first time, citizens are openly criticizing Mali’s military government, which has until now enjoyed widespread support in the capital. Annie Risemberg has more from the capital, Bamako
…