Mass Death Sentences in Egypt

A judge at a mass trial in Egypt has recommended the death penalty for 683 people - including Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie. However, the judge also commuted to life terms 492 death sentences out of 529 passed in March in a separate case. The defendants faced charges over an attack on a police station in Minya in 2013 in which a policeman was killed. Ahmed Maher, the group's leader, was sentenced to three years in prison in December for violating a law that bans all but police-sanctioned protests.

Libyan Oil Shortage

In Libya the intern government was forced to slash there budget by a large amount of 36 billion U.S Dollars due to a huge oil shortage which knocked oil production from 1.4 Barrels Per Day to 200,000 Barrels Per Day. This has caused extreme dysfunction in the Libyan Government and caused the Prime Minister, Abdullah al-Thanay to step down saying he has recently been threatened by unnamed members of the militias who helped overthrow Gaddafi during the civil war. This cut in the budget of Libya has caused infrastructure funding to go down severely and has ended almost all government programs that were planned to be implemented in the coming months.

Boko Haram receives help from Al-Qaeda

Dr. Lional Von Frederick Rawlins, a forensic criminologist, says that foreign terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda are giving aid to Boko Haram in Nigeria. These foreign terrorist groups are training, funding, and sending troops for Boko Haram. Rawlins also suspects they are helping coordinate and accomplish terror attacks in Nigeria. Rawlins says many survivors of Boko Haram attacks describe their attackers speaking some language foreign to Nigeria, and that this shows that terrorists must be coming in from different countries. He also says that Boko Haram is getting too confident and something needs to be done before it only gets worse. http://allafrica.com/stories/201404210674.html

Polio Hits Equatorial Guinea, Threatens Central Africa

After being free of polio for 15 years, two cases of it have been reported in Guinea. The children who are paralyzed are in two totally different parts of the country. This means that the disease could of spread across the nation. The outbreak is dangerous because Guinea has the worst polio vaccination rate. Controlling the disease in Guinea will be challenging. One of the current polio cases is in capital, Malabo, located on an island off the country's Atlantic coast. The disease could spread even further, to the troubled Central Africa Republic. The violent clashes taken place in the country increases the chances of polio breaking out in the area. Peacekeepers are being sent to the country to try and help calm down the violence.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/17/303403242/polio-hits-equatorial-guinea-threatens-central-africa

South Sudan: Children Killed in Brutal South Sudan Fighting

Juba — A number of children have been killed in this week's fighting in South Sudan - some in an attack on displaced civilians while others have been caught in the crossfire or died as a result of being recruited by armed groups and forces, UNICEF said today.

The exact number of children that were killed is unknown but there was a dozen of civilian killed and attacked by gunmen on Thursday who attacked Internally Displaced Persons sheltering at the UN Protection of Civilians. A lot of kids and families were here so if a kid was to be recruited by the army then he or she was a target as well as their family. 

Jonathan Veitch stated that "children were attacked in a place where they should have felt safe" UNICEF Representative in South Sudan.






http://allafrica.com/stories/201404210005.html

Gunmen Attack Nigerian Girl's School

Yesterday, gunmen entered the campus of the Government Girl's Secondary School, Yana in Bauchi. It is reported that gunmen entered the staff housing around 2:30 on Sunday morning. The attackers set fire to staff house buildings, stole the principal's car, and killed a 5 year old girl in a fire set to open the bank vault.  These attacks came just a week after 129 girls were abducted from the Government Girl's Secondary School, Chibok. It is unknown currently who is behind these attacks and if they are related.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201404210247.html

Premium Times
Author unknown

Embrace the Ice

One of the many things that stirs the memory of our childhood was the memory of the ice-cream truck and its melody as it rolled down the hill towards you. Ice cream has become an iconic example of delicious desserts and nowhere is this more prevalent than in Rwanda. Rwanda is a very hot country, and ice-cream is not something you'd expect in that nation, but lo and behold it has opened. Enter Inzozi Nziza. This ice cream store, the first in the nation, has received massive popularity by the Rwandan people, many of which have never even tasted ice cream. This is a good reminder, that even if all the bad things are going on around you, the populace should still look for something 'sweet' to satisfy them.

allAfrica.com
Amy Fallon
http://allafrica.com/stories/201404210544.html