Category: International News

South Africa’s power utility, Eskom, has restored eight units at power plants after implementing its highest stage of controlled power cuts early Sunday due to multiple failures at Majuba and Camden power stations over the weekend. On Saturday, Eskom applied Stage 3 power cuts, locally known as load-shedding, reducing 3,000 megawatts from the national grid.

“Of the 10 units that we lost overnight, we have essentially returned six units,” Eskom group CEO Dan Marokane told reporters on Sunday.

He added that five to six more units were expected to become operational during the day, boosting the 3,200 MW of capacity recovered overnight.

“We anticipate getting out of this stage by the end of the week,” he said, noting that, given the pace of recovery, Eskom would consider reducing power cuts by Monday.

Early Monday morning, Eskom announced that outages would be scaled down to Stage 4 until further notice.

Regular breakdowns at Eskom’s fleet of ageing coal-fired plants, which provide the bulk of electricity in Africa’s most industrialized economy, often cause load-shedding. The system follows an incremental approach, with Stage 1 cutting 1,000 MW and Stage 6 being the highest implemented to date.

Delta Air Lines is offering $30,000 (£23,792) to each person on board a plane that crash-landed in Toronto on Monday – all of whom survived. As it landed in the Canadian city, the plane skidded along the runway in flames before flipping over and coming to a halt upside down. Passengers described their amazement as most of them walked away without injuries. It remains unclear what caused the incident, which is under investigation. There were 76 passengers and four crew on the flight, which had travelled from the US city of Minneapolis before making its crash-landing in Canada. A spokesperson for Delta said the money offer had no strings attached and did not affect customers’ rights.

Toronto law firm Rochon Genova says it has been retained by certain passengers and their families over the crash-landing.

Lawyer Vincent Genova said the group expected a “timely and fair resolution”, highlighting that his clients “suffered personal injuries of a serious nature that required hospital attention”. In an email to the BBC, Mr. Genova said the $30,000 compensation is an “advance” payment meant to assist plane crash victims with short-term financial challenges, and the airline will seek to deduct it from any later settled claims. There is precedent to these types of payments, like in 2013, when Asiana Airlines offered passengers of a San Francisco plane crash $10,000 in initial compensation.

Last year, Alaska Airlines offered a $1,500 cash payment to passengers after mid-air door-plug blowout on a flight from Portland.

Following this week’s incident in Toronto, the plane crew and emergency responders were praised for their quick work in removing people from the wrecked vehicle. The plane’s various safety features have also been credited for ensuring no loss of life.

All of the 21 passengers who were taken to hospital had been released by Thursday morning, the airline said. Delta’s chief told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that the flight crew were experienced and trained for any condition. The airline’s head Ed Bastian told CBS the plane crew had “performed heroically, but also as expected”, given that “safety is embedded into our system”. He said Delta was continuing to support those affected. Several theories about what caused the crash have been suggested to the BBC by experts who reviewed footage, including that harsh winter weather and a rapid rate of descent played a role.

One passenger recalled “a very forceful event”, and the sound of “concrete and metal” at the moment of impact. Another said passengers were left hanging upside down in their seats “like bats”.

The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder have been recovered from the wreckage. The investigation is being led by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB), supported by US officials.

On Wednesday evening, the wreckage was removed from the airport runway.

The accident was the fourth major air incident in North America in a space of three weeks – and was followed on Wednesday by a crash in Arizona in which two people lost their lives when their small planes collided.

Experts continue to insist that air travel is overwhelmingly safe – more so than other forms of transport, in fact.

That message was emphasized by US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who told CBS on Wednesday there was no pattern behind the incidents, each of which he said was “very unique”.

A Scottish businessman who disappeared in Kenya has been found dead.

Campbell Scott, from Fife, was attending a conference at the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi when he was last seen by colleagues on 16 February.

The 58-year-old was a senior director at credit scoring firm Fico. His employer confirmed to the BBC on Monday that local police had identified his body.

A spokeswoman for the firm said staff were “devastated” by the news.

She added: “Campbell was a leader in our international Scores business.

“He joined FICO in 2014 and was instrumental in introducing Scores to new markets and growing our business with existing partnerships. We mourn his passing and will miss his humour and kindness.

“Our thoughts are with Campbell’s family and friends. We ask that the media respect their privacy.”

Mr Scott studied at Woodmill High School in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy Technical College, going on to work for a number of companies before joining Fico. The JW Marriott hotel is located in the Nairobi’s Westlands district, an affluent business area.

Police launched a search following his disappearance and were assisted by Interpol, according to newspaper reports.

The UK Foreign Office has been approached for comment.

Indian authorities have banned two highly addictive opioids in response to a BBC investigation which found they were fueling a public health crisis in parts of West Africa. In a letter seen by the BBC from India’s Drugs Controller General, Dr Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi said permission to manufacture and export the drugs had been withdrawn. BBC Eye found one pharmaceutical company, Aveo, had been illegally exporting a harmful mix of tapentadol and carisoprodol in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire. India’s Food and Drug Administration said the company’s factory in Mumbai had since been raided and its entire stock seized.

The circular from Dr Raghuvanshi, dated to Friday, cited the BBC investigation in his decision to ban all combinations of tapentadol and carisoprodol, which was to be implemented with immediate effect. He said this also came after officials had looked into “the potential of drug abuse and its harmful impact on population”. Tapentadol is a powerful opioid, and carisoprodol is a muscle relaxant so addictive it is banned in Europe. Carisoprodol is approved for use in the US, but only for short periods of up to three weeks. Withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, insomnia and hallucinations.

The combination of the two drugs is not licensed for use anywhere in the world as they can cause breathing difficulties and seizures, and an overdose can kill. Despite the risks, these opioids are popular street drugs in many West African countries, because they are so cheap and widely available. Publicly available export data show that Aveo Pharmaceuticals, along with a sister company called Westfin International, has shipped millions of these tablets to Ghana and other West African countries.

The BBC World Service also found packets of these pills with the Aveo logo for sale on the streets of Nigeria, and in Ivoirian towns and cities.

Nigeria, with a population of 225 million people, provides the biggest market for these pills. It has been estimated that about four million Nigerians abuse some form of opioid, according to the nation’s National Bureau of Statistics. As part of the investigation, the BBC also sent an undercover operative – posing as an African businessman looking to supply opioids to Nigeria – inside one of Aveo’s factories in India, where they filmed one of Aveo’s directors, Vinod Sharma, showing off the same dangerous products the BBC found for sale across West Africa. In the secretly recorded footage, the operative tells Sharma that his plan is to sell the pills to teenagers in Nigeria “who all love this product”.

Sharma in response replies “OK,” before explaining that if users take two or three pills at once, they can “relax” and agrees they can get “high”.

Towards the end of the meeting, Sharma says: “This is very harmful for the health,” adding that “nowadays, this is business”.

Sharma and Aveo Pharmaceuticals did not respond to a request for comment when the BBC’s initial investigation was published.

India’s Food and Drug Administration said a sting operation saw Aveo’s entire stock seized and further production halted in a statement on Friday. Further legal action will be taken against the company, it added.

The agency said it was “fully prepared” to take action against anyone involved in “illegal activities that tarnish the reputation of the country”.

The FDA has been instructed to carry out further inspections to prevent the supply of the drugs, it said.

An Australian couple have spoken of the “traumatic” moment the body of a dead passenger was placed next to them on a Qatar Airways flight. Mitchell Ring and Jennifer Colin, who were travelling to Venice for a dream holiday, told Australia’s Channel 9 that a woman had died in the aisle beside them during the flight from Melbourne to Doha. The couple say the cabin crew placed her corpse, covered in blankets, next to Mr. Ring for the remaining four hours of the flight without offering to move him, despite there being empty seats. Qatar Airways said it apologized for “any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused”, adding that it was in the process of contacting passengers.

The couple said they had not been contacted or offered support by Qatar Airways or Qantas, the airline through which they booked the flight. They said there should be a protocol to ensure passengers onboard were looked after in such situations. ‘Duty of care’ Mr. Ring told Channel Nine’s Current Affair programmed that staff had responded “in no time” when the woman collapsed, but that “unfortunately the lady couldn’t be saved, which was pretty heart-breaking to watch”.

He said the cabin crew had tried to move her body towards business class “but she was quite a large lady, and they couldn’t get her through the aisle”. Mr. Ring said the crew had seen seats were available beside him.

“They said, ‘Can you move over please?’ and I just said, ‘Yes no problem’.

“Then they placed the lady in the chair I was in.”

While Ms. Colin was able to move to an empty seat nearby, Mr. Ring said he had not been given the option to do so by cabin crew – even though there were vacant seats. When the plane landed four hours later, he said passengers were asked to stay put while medical staff and police came on board. He said ambulance officers had then started pulling blankets off the woman and he had seen her face.

The couple said there needed to be a “duty of care” for customers and staff.

“We should be contacted to make sure, do you need some support, do you need some counselling?”

Ms Colin called the experience “traumatic” and said: “We totally understand that we can’t hold the airline responsible for the poor lady’s death, but there has to be a protocol to look after the customers on board.”

In a statement, Qatar Airways said: “First and foremost our thoughts are with the family of the passenger who sadly passed away on board our flight.

“We apologise for any inconvenience or distress this incident may have caused, and are in the process of contacting passengers in line with our policies and procedures.”

A Qantas spokesperson said: “The process for handling incidents onboard an aircraft like this is managed by the operating airline, which in this case is Qatar Airways.”

The Vatican said Pope Francis had rested, and the night had “passed peacefully” after revealing on Saturday that his condition continues to be “critical” as he suffers from a “prolonged asthma-like respiratory crisis”. The pontiff was described as “more unwell” than on Friday and he has received blood transfusions. The 88-year-old is being treated for pneumonia in both lungs at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.

The blood transfusions were deemed necessary due to a low platelet count, associated with anemia, the Vatican said. It said the Roman Catholic leader was alert and, in his armchair, but required a “high flow” of oxygen and his prognosis “remains guarded”. “The Holy Father’s condition remains critical,” it said in a statement. “The Pope is not out of danger.” It added: “The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair even if he was suffering more than yesterday.”

The Pope has asked for openness about his health, so the Vatican has begun releasing daily statements. The tone and length of the announcements has varied, sometimes leaving Pope-watchers to attempt to read between the lines. But this is by far the starkest assessment yet and it is unusually detailed. It declines to give any prognosis. It comes just a day after doctors treating the Pope said for the first time that he was responding to medication, although they were clear that his condition was complex. They said on Friday that the slightest change of circumstance would upset what was called a “delicate balance”. “He is the Pope,” as one of them put it. “But he is also a man.”

The Pope was first admitted to hospital on 14 February after experiencing difficulties breathing for several days. He is especially prone to lung infections due to developing pleurisy – an inflammation around the lungs – as an adult and having part of one of his lungs removed at age 21. During his 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic church, the Argentine has been hospitalized several times, including in March 2023 when he spent three nights in hospital with bronchitis. The latest news will worry Catholics worldwide, who are following news of the Pope’s condition closely.

It is a busy Jubilee year for the Catholic Church with huge numbers of visitors expected in Rome and a major schedule of events for the Pope. He is not known for enjoying being inactive. Even in hospital, his doctors say he went to pray in the chapel this week and had been reading in his chair. But even before the latest setback, the Vatican had said he would not appear in public to lead prayer with pilgrims on Sunday, meaning he will miss the event for the second week in a row.

Well-wishers have been leaving candles, flowers and letters for the Pope outside Rome’s Gemelli hospital all week. There was no change outside St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Saturday evening, however, with no crowd gathering. But people passing through the square said they were following the news. “We feel very close to the Pope, here in Rome,” one Italian man told the BBC. “We saw the latest, and we are worried.”

Friedrich Merz is likely to become the next German chancellor after his conservative CDU party topped the vote in elections, exit polls project. The stuttering economy and immigration were major voter concerns. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) almost doubled its vote share and surged into second place. But it is likely to be frozen out of power as other parties are refusing to work with it.

SPD, the party of current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, slumped to third place, with just 16% of the vote – its worst showing in decades. The election came against a backdrop of the Trump administration transforming historic security ties with Europe and moving ahead with peace talks on Ukraine. Whoever wins, coalition talks are a near-certainty. Single parties rarely win majorities in German elections so Merz will have to open talks with other parties on forming a government.

More than 32,000 people have fled to towns in northeast Colombia as they attempt to escape a sharp rise in fighting between militant factions, according to the country’s ombudsman.

Iris Marín said the violence escalated last week in the Catatumbo region, displacing tens of thousands of people. Hundreds more remain confined to their homes and are unable to evacuate due to the ferocity of the clashes, Marín warned Tuesday in a video statement.

Colombian authorities say 80 people have been killed in the fighting.

Almost half of those displaced have flocked to the city of Cúcuta near the Venezuelan border. Officials there have launched a major campaign to shelter the more than 15,000 people who have arrived in recent days.

In Cúcuta, the city’s football stadium has been turned into a large welcome center, with thousands of displaced victims lining up to receive food, water and clothing from locals.

Many are also sheltering in hotels and the homes of relatives, Cúcuta Mayor Jorge Acevedo said, pledging to support those in need.

“We are going to address the emergency that is occurring. Total solidarity, respect, affection and love for these human beings who are arriving in the city of Cúcuta,” Acevedo said.

Violence in strategic drug production territory

The humanitarian crisis is a direct result of increased clashes between the National Liberation Army – ELN – and spin-offgroups of thedisbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Both factions were founded around the 1960s and ‘70s as left-wing guerrilla groups, but are now mostly involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, Colombia senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The Catatumbo region in northeastern Colombia, where the crisis originated, is a strategic territory for both drug production and trafficking due to its proximity with Venezuela. The region has seen some of the highest levels of violence in modern Colombian history.

In response to the violence, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has suspended peace talks with the ELN, whose actions he described as criminal. On Monday, he said he would declare a state of internal unrest, but that decree has yet to be published or signed.

The Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday reactivated arrest warrants for 31 ELN members who were involved in peace negotiations. The judicial body said the move was due to “the evidence and the seriousness of the criminal acts” in the Catatumbo region.

The arrest warrants had been suspended since 2022, when Petro restarted the peace process with that armed group.

Some have criticized Petro’s “total peace” initiative which has attempted to reduce violence partly through negotiations.

“The crisis in Catatumbo should be a wake-up call for the Petro administration. Its ‘total peace’, coupled with the lack of effective security and justice policies, have allowed armed groups to expand their presence and brutal control over remote communities across Colombia,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

CNN has reached out to the Colombian foreign ministry for comment.

Evacuation efforts

The Colombian cities of Ocaña and Tibú have also received 11,503 and 5,300 displaced people respectively, Colombia’s ombudsman Marín said Tuesday.

Other victims have fled to neighboring Venezuela, a country that in recent years has seen far more people leaving it’s borders than entering due to spiraling economic and political insecurity.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the country has implemented a humanitarian operation to help Colombian families that have arrived in the municipality of Jesus Maria Semprún near the border in recent days.

Colombia’s defense ministry said more than 400 evacuations have been carried out in the Catatumbo region since the uptick in fighting last week, while more than 5,000 soldiers and special forces unit have been deployed to Cúcuta.

Nuuk, GreenlandCNN — 

The comings and goings at Greenland’s new international airport in its capital Nuuk look a bit different of late, as journalists like me come here to see what all the fuss is about.

The fuss, of course, is the result of US Donald Trump’s interest in taking control of the massive island that is geographically part of North America but legally is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a member of NATO, the European Union, and a US ally.

I wanted to drill down on what’s here, what makes it attractive and whether the local population is welcoming or hesitant about being in Trump’s sights.

“Greenland is the front door for North America,” said Tom Dans, leaning into the arguments of Greenland’s importance to US national security.

I’d wanted to speak to Dans, a private equity investor with prospective interests in the Arctic who campaigned for Trump, but I hadn’t expected to see him at the airport.

To be fair, Dans wasn’t hard to spot. He’s a tall Texan with one of those wide shiny smiles wealthy Americans tend to have. He was also wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with the American flag.

He didn’t have more time to chat then, so I stepped outside, into the 14 Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) cold that was, I would learn, balmy compared to what was to come later in the week.

My CNN colleague Neil Bennett and I trudged through the snow to the back of a long line for taxis.

“You are here because Trump,” remarked a woman waiting in front of us. Not yet accustomed to the Nordic tone, I couldn’t quite tell if this was meant as a simple statement or an accusation. “We are,” I dutifully confirmed.

“They want more tourists to come here, they need to get more taxis,” she said. We needn’t worry too much though, she explained, we wouldn’t be waiting in the cold for too long. Despite the apparent shortage of taxis, they can’t go very far and return quickly. The trip to the center of Nuuk from the airport is about 4 miles — and then the roads just stop. There is nowhere else to go, at least by car. Greenland — three times the size of Texas — has only about 56 miles of paved roads.

She introduced herself as Lisbeth Højdal, a consultant from Denmark who was here to run a course training career counselors.

The Danish government provides Greenland a grant of about $500 million every year to support health, education and other services here. Højdal’s course was part of that package of support.

So, before I’d even had a chance to look around, I’d heard the views of outsiders — one American, one Dane.

But Greenlanders have many different views.

“We have always been told that Denmark is the big savior of Greenland,” Qupanuk Olsen recalls. The Danes, she says, look down on her and fellow native Greenlandic people who are Inuit: “You guys cannot stand on your own feet; you guys don’t have anything without us. You can’t study, you don’t have health care, you have nothing without us.”

Olsen is known as “Greenland’s biggest influencer” with more than a million subscribers combined across Youtube, TikTok and Instagram where she shows the world the best of Greenlandic, and specifically Inuit, culture.

For an introduction to that culture, she brings me to see the “Mother of the Sea” — a striking stone sculpture on Nuuk’s rocky coast, depicting Sedna, the goddess of the sea in the Inuit religion. At high tide the statue is partially submerged.

Inuits (sometimes incorrectly referred to as “Eskimos”) make up almost 90% of Greenland’s population of 57,000.

We walk a few steps away from the shoreline and the “Mother of the Sea,” and Olsen points to the top of a hill and another figure, “I really want this statue gone.”
The statue, which looks over all of Nuuk, is of Hans Egede, an 18th-century Dano-Norwegian missionary who brought Christianity to the island.

“Why should he be up there? Why isn’t it a Greenlander up there?” Olsen asks. “We Greenlanders should be more proud of who we are … not celebrate some foreigner who came here and changed our culture and colonized us.”

Danish control of Greenland dates to the time of Egede. Greenland was granted home-rule in 1979 and, after a referendum in 2008, the island was allowed more self-governing powers including the ability to hold a referendum on independence (though independence would also require approval from the Danish parliament.)

But despite the increased autonomy, for Olsen the statue of Egede is a daily reminder of Danish colonization — something she purposefully talks about in the present tense.

“I used to be a royalist. I used to look up to the Danish people and thought they were better than me. Now, I’ve really realized that’s not the case,” she says.

In the 1960s and 70s, doctors placed IUD contraceptives in young Inuit girls without their or their parents’ consent as a means of population control. An investigation by Danish and Greenlandic officials into what has become known as “the spiral case” is expected to finish this year.

“I should have a lot more cousins,” Olsen says.

Another practice known as “legally fatherless” allowed Danish men who impregnated unmarried women in Greenland to skirt any responsibilities for their child. Olsen says her mother was one of the “legally fatherless” children born here.

In recent weeks, Denmark has announced a boost in Arctic defense spending and the Danish king revealed a new design for the royal coast of arms, making far more prominent the symbols for Greenland and the Faroe Islands (also part of the Kingdom of Denmark.)

But it’s too little, too late, says Olsen, who supports independence for Greenland and is standing in upcoming elections.

She acknowledges an independent Greenland would need to sign new agreements with other countries for defense of its 27,000 miles of coastline, and other arrangements when it comes to trade and financial support, but for her that’s no reason to jump from Danish control to American.

“Why should I? I’m so proud of who we are as Inuit,” she says. “Why should we just be taken by another colonizer?”

The US already has strong connections with and interest in Greenland.

But even Boassen does not want Greenland to be taken over by the US.

He doesn’t want to be subsumed as the 51st state, he says, but wants the US to be Greenland’s “best and closest ally with everything — with defense, mining, oil exploration, trade, everything.”

Not all Greenlanders want to break free from Denmark.

“We might be ready someday, but not today, not tomorrow,” says Aqqalu C. Jerimiassen, the leader of Atassut, a party in favor of staying within the Danish kingdom.

He acknowledged the wrongs committed against native Greenlanders and said the Danes must accept responsibility.

“Every colonizer has made mistakes,” he said. “But we cannot live in the past.”

Atassut, which describes itself as a “moderate conservative” party, supports universal health care, free education, and other forms of welfare that are basic concepts across much of Europe, and which Denmark provides for Greenland.

He says while some here “very much would like to be US citizens and would like to follow the American dream,” most would not be in favor of joining the United States and losing universal access to these services.

Greenland is holding elections next month that may reveal more about its population’s views about future relationships with the world. And the parliament just fast-tracked a law banning foreign political funding.

That’s fine by Højdal — the Danish guidance counselor I met at the airport — who said Greenland’s future is for Greenland, not anyone else, to decide.

As she watches the news coming from the United States of the hectic first weeks of the second Trump administration, she says a Turkish proverb comes to mind.

“When a clown enters a castle, he doesn’t become a king. The castle becomes a circus.”

Greenland, she hopes, doesn’t become a circus.