August 26, 2020

Pope Francis will resume limited public weekly audiences early next month, the Vatican announced Wednesday, six months after the head of the Catholic Church halted the practice because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Wednesday events will be held in a closed courtyard of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, where a maximum of 500 seats will be placed, rather than in St Peter’s Square, a Vatican spokesman told AFP.

Entry into the courtyard will open without reservation two hours before the audience, which will start at 09:30 (0730 GMT), the Vatican official said.

Jorge Bergoglio – the birth name of Francis — …

Two people were shot dead on Tuesday night in the US city of Kenosha, police said, as groups clashed during protests over the shooting of a black man.

Violence broke out as hundreds of protesters marched for a third night in the Wisconsin city in anger after Jacob Blake was seen in video footage being shot up to seven times at point-blank range by a white Kenosha police officer on Sunday.

The most recent police shooting of an African American has sparked outrage and protests in US cities, including New York and Minneapolis, as part of the huge Black …

At least 24 civilians were killed over two days by a notorious militia in the Beni region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the army is battling armed groups, a local source said Wednesday.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a mainly Muslim movement that originated in Uganda in the 1990s has been blamed for more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the Beni region of North Kivu province since 2014.

“Twenty bodies were discovered Monday in the villages of Mapasana and Mabuo,” Kinos Kathuho, head of the local civil society told AFP.

Chinese pharmaceutical company, Fosun Pharma, on Tuesday, donated anti-malaria drugs to Kenya’s Health Ministry to boost the war against the tropical disease.

Malaria is the leading cause of death among pregnant women and children below five years in the country.

Rashid Aman, Chief Administrative Secretary in the Ministry of Health, said the donation will aid treatment of severe cases.

“The drug that is being donated is Artesunate injection 60 mg for treatment of severe malaria, a life-threatening condition,’’ Aman said during COVID-19 briefing in Nairobi.

Aman …

Residents of Kano State have lamented the high cost of rice in the state despite mass production by farmers. Rice, the most popular staple food in the country, is gradually becoming unaffordable to the common man, most of the residents lamented.

Merchants in rice, on their part, attributed the recent high cost of rice despite the proliferation of mega and small rice mills in the state to hike in the price of paddy as well as the introduction of middlemen in the business.

Chronicle market survey revealed that a bag of locally milled rice is now sold at between N22, …