Africa

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — The future looked promising for Tinashe Mapuranga, an intern at a leading bank in Zimbabwe who appeared set to get a staff position as soon as he completed his college degree.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zambia’s parliament has elected its first female speaker, days after new President Hakainde Hichilema began shaking up the government by firing security commanders and promising economic reforms.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says his government will encourage people to get COVID-19 vaccinations but will not force them.

Ramaphosa said that he believes employees may refuse vaccinations on medical and constitutional grounds.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The recent release of three separate groups of students who had been abducted in northern Nigeria brought joyful reunions and the hope that others still held might soon be freed.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Vaccine doses produced by a plant in South Africa will no longer be exported to Europe following the intervention of South Africa’s government, the African Union's COVID-19 vaccine envoy said Thursday.

The Wallabies host the All Blacks in a rare Sunday afternoon match at the international level. Turns out that's not the only unusual occurrence in a Rugby Championship compressed from four countries into one Australian state — at least from next week.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand reported its first coronavirus death in more than six months on Saturday, while the number of new cases continued to trend downward.

Health authorities said the woman who died was in her 90s and had underlying health problems.

PARIS (AP) — Monaco’s Princess Charlene is in “reassuring” condition after being suddenly hospitalized with complications from a serious sinus infection, the principality’s palace said Friday.

Princess Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer who has been on an extended stay in her home country of South Africa, suffered an unspecified “malaise” overnight Wednesday, the palace said.

Tiny Cape Verde has one big advantage as it tries to become African basketball champion for the first time: 7-foot-3 former NBA draft pick Walter “Edy” Tavares.

The Real Madrid center has led his squad into the AfroBasket semifinals to face defending champion Tunisia on Saturday, when Senegal squares off with Ivory Coast in the other final-four game in host city Kigali, Rwanda.

AUG 27 – SEPT 2, 2021

Evacuees leaving Afghanistan landed in European countries as Poland reinforced its border with Belarus. There were film festivals in Venice and the Czech Republic, and the International Roma Theatre Festival in Romania.

LAS VEGAS — Nevada hospitals are seeing a severe shortage of nurses and some northern Nevada hospitals are nearly out of staffed beds for patients, state health officials said Thursday.

Nevada had a shortage of nurses even before the pandemic, when each wave of cases and crush of hospitalizations left nurses demoralized and drove some to leave the profession.

TOKYO — Moderna Inc. and its Japanese partner are recalling more than 1 million doses of the U.S. drug maker’s coronavirus vaccine after confirming that contamination reported last week was tiny particles of stainless steel.

NEW YORK (AP) — The remnants of Hurricane Ida blew through the mid-Atlantic states Wednesday with at least two tornadoes, heavy winds and drenching rains that collapsed the roof of a U.S. Postal Service building, left cars and roads underwater and sent garbage floating through the streets of New York.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Huw Groucutt passes rolling sand dunes as far as his eye can see when traveling to archaeological sites in the northern Arabian Peninsula. But the same desert regions were once intermittently lush and green, attracting early humans and large animals such as hippopotamuses migrating out of Africa to linger at ancient lakes, new evidence suggests.

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Morocco has launched a campaign to administer COVID-19 vaccines to children from 12 to 17, becoming one of the first African countries to inoculate that age group.

The World Health Organization says that the North African country has already given around 33 million doses to adults this year.

GENEVA (AP) — Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s, the United Nations weather agency reports.

MADRID (AP) — At least 11 people are feared dead after another boat crossing the Atlantic Ocean to get from North Africa to Spain's Canary Islands became a trap for migrants trying to reach European territory, Spanish authorities and activists reported Tuesday.

USA Basketball will face Puerto Rico, Mexico and Cuba in the first round of qualifying for the 2023 Basketball World Cup.

The Americans, who won a fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal in Tokyo but finished only seventh at the most recent Basketball World Cup two years ago, found out their qualifying opponents Tuesday when the draw was held at FIBA headquarters in Mies, Switzerland.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia says it has reached a deal with Singapore to acquire 500,000 doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine next week in return for delivering the same number of shots to Singapore in December.

LINCOLN, Maine (AP) — A U.S. Army special forces soldier who died while performing a rescue of a downed helicopter crew in Somalia was immortalized Monday with a memorial in his hometown.

MADRID (AP) — At least 29 Africans, including seven children, died last week while trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands on a smuggling boat, according to information released Monday from a U.N. migration agency and a Spanish migrant charity in touch with victims' relatives.

BERLIN (AP) — Leaded gasoline has finally reached the end of the road, the U.N. environment office said Monday, after the last country in the world halted the sale of the highly toxic fuel.

Algeria stopped providing leaded gas last month, prompting the U.N.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Hundreds of Palestinians gathered Sunday night along the separation fence with Israel, setting tires on fire and throwing explosives as Gaza's Hamas rulers pressed ahead with a campaign aimed at pressuring Israel to ease a stifling blockade of the territory.

TOKYO — Taro Kono, the Japanese minister in charge of the vaccine rollout, promised Sunday a timely administering of booster shots for the coronavirus, as the nation aims to fully vaccinate its population by October or November.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hundreds of Hamas-backed activists on Saturday launched what they said was the first in a series of nighttime protests along the Israeli border, throwing explosives toward Israeli forces who responded with live fire.

MIAMI — In Columbia County, which now leads Florida in COVID-19 cases per capita, 17-year-old Jo’Keria Graham died just days before she started her senior year of high school. The teen, who loved taking care of kids and called her grandparents daily to check on them or help at their office, was still in quarantine at her Lake City home after testing positive for COVID days before school started.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Authorities in northern Nigeria announced three separate groups of kidnapped students were freed within a 24-hour period, prompting speculation late Friday that large ransoms had been paid to the gunmen blamed for a spate of recent abductions.