Day: February 8, 2022

Following a judgment by the Health Professions Council of South Africa, a prominent paediatric surgeon’s operating license was officially revoked this week (HPCSA). Dr. Peter Beale has been charged with gross medical negligence in the Johannesburg High Court, where he is currently facing increased murder allegations. Who is Peter Beale?The deaths of two children on his operating table – the 10-year-old Zayyan Sayed and the 21-month-old Alissa Strydom – led to a legal investigation, which eventually found its way to the courtroom. Beale is also accused of falsifying the results of an biopsy, in… Continue reading “South African paediatric surgeon’s operating license officially revoked after child deaths”

The way John Aristides Saldarriaga tells it, he was out for a routine day’s fishing with friends on a lake about a mile from the fabled ranch of the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. It was Halloween, Oct. 31, 2021, and the lake near Doradal in the department of Antioquia was a known haunt of the feral hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) that had spawned from the four hippos that Escobar had shipped over from Africa “You don’t disturb me, I won’t disturb you,” was Saldarriaga’s philosophy to fishing in the midst of the hippos, as he tells it to me. A hippo calf swimming in a pond with the da… Continue reading “In Colombia, Escobar’s hippos spawn another problem: Wildlife trafficking”

Al Qaeda’s past ties to the recently empowered Taliban have the potential of making Afghanistan a safe haven for extremists, and “terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history,” United Nations experts said in a report circulated Monday. In the wide-ranging report, the experts also said extremists linked to both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group are successfully advancing in Africa, especially in the turbulent Sahel. And they said the IS continues to operate “as an entrenched rural insurgency” in Iraq and Syria, where its so-called caliphate ruled a signific… Continue reading “UN experts: ‘Terrorist groups’ enjoy freedom in Afghanistan”

An estimated 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are facing severe hunger as the Horn of Africa experiences its worst drought in decades, the World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday. Three consecutive rainy seasons have failed as the region has recorded its driest conditions since 1981, the UN agency said. The drought has destroyed crops and inflicted “abnormally” high livestock deaths, forcing rural families who rely on herding and farming to abandon their homes. Water and grazing land is in short supply and forecasts of below-average rainfall in coming months only threaten more … Continue reading “13 million face hunger as Horn of Africa drought worsens: UN”