Trump, Merkel meet in Washington

US President Donald Trump has met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Washington, discussing a range of issues from the alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the crisis in Ukraine to the European policies regarding immigration and refugees.

During a meeting in the capital on Friday, Trump threw his full support behind the NATO alliance, however, complained that some member states were not contributing enough and defaulted on paying their dues.

"I reiterated to Chancellor Merkel my strong support for NATO as well as the need for our NATO allies to pay their fair share for the cost of defense," Trump told a joint press conference after the meeting. "Many nations owe vast sums of money from past years and it is very unfair to the United States. These nations must pay what they owe."

The US president thanked Merkel "for the German government's commitment to increase defense spending and work toward contributing at least 2 percent of GDP" to the NATO alliance.

The Ukrainian crisis
Trump and the German chancellor also agreed on the need for a "peaceful solution" to the conflict in Ukraine.

The US president expressed his appreciation for Merkel's counsel and partnership in efforts "to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, where we ideally seek a peaceful solution."

Merkel for his part said that, “There has to be a safe and secure solution for Ukraine, but relationship with Russia has to improve as well.”   

Immigration and refugees
At the Friday meeting, Trump referred to immigration as a topic on which Washington and Berlin have vastly different views, noting that the focus must be on national security.

“Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the safety of our citizens must always come first,” he said, adding that the US will respect historic institutions and the “right of free people to manage their own destiny.”

The German chancellor stressed that close cooperation with the US on immigration issues should be based on "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief."

The meeting between the two leaders was the first since Trump took the helm at the White House.

-PressTV

UN: South Sudan government still buying arms despite famine

South Sudan's government is mainly to blame for famine in parts of the war-torn country, yet President Salva Kiir is still boosting his forces using millions of dollars from oil sales, according to a confidential United Nations report.

UN sanctions monitors said 97 percent of South Sudan's known revenue comes from oil sales, a significant portion of which is now forward oil sales, and that at least half of the budget - "likely substantially more" - is devoted to security.

"Revenue from forward oil sales totaled approximately $243 million between late March and late October 2016," the panel of UN monitors said in the report to the UN Security Council, seen by Reuters on Thursday.

"Despite the scale and scope of the political, humanitarian, and economic crises, the panel continues to uncover evidence of the ongoing procurement of weapons by the ... Government for the SPLA (South Sudanese army), the National Security Service, and other associated forces and militias," the report said.



The United Nations has declared a famine in some parts of the world's youngest country, where nearly half its population - some 5.5 million people - face food shortages. A civil war erupted in 2013 when Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, who has fled and is now in South Africa.

The United Nations says at least one quarter of South Sudanese have been displaced since 2013.
South Sudan's government rejected the report on Friday.

The annual report of the sanctions monitors to the 15-member Security Council comes ahead of a ministerial meeting of the body on South Sudan next Thursday, which is due to be chaired by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

In December, the Security Council failed to adopt a US-drafted resolution to impose an arms embargo and further sanctions on South Sudan despite warnings by UN officials of a possible genocide. The UN monitors again recommended in their report that the council impose an arms embargo on South Sudan.

UN peacekeepers have been in South Sudan since 2011.


-Reuters

South Africa launches hate crime unit with Nigeria

South Africa says it will launch an "early warning" system with Nigeria to track and deter xenophobic attacks following a surge in violence in the rainbow nation.

South Africa's Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said the new monitor would "help prevent violence" against foreigners and their businesses as she met with Geoffrey Onyeama, her Nigerian counterpart on Monday.

Last month, more than 20 shops were targeted in Atteridgeville, 120km west of Pretoria, while in Rosettenville, an area south of the commercial capital Johannesburg, residents attacked at least 12 houses.

In response to the violence, the Nigerian government called for the African Union to step in and stop the "xenophobic attacks", claiming 20 Nigerians were killed in South Africa last year.

South African authorities have declined to confirm the figure which may have been the result of other criminal activity, not just anti-immigrant violence.

Nkoana-Mashabane told reporters it was untrue that the attacks were specifically "targeting Nigerians", adding citizens of other countries were also affected.

She said the monitor would meet every three months and would be made up of representatives from both countries including immigration officials, business associations, and civil society groups.

'Mass attacks'

Onyeama said he had received assurances that Nigerians in South Africa would be able to live in peace and called for an end to "mass attacks".

According to the Nigerian Union in South Africa, there are about 800,000 Nigerians in the country, many of them living in Johannesburg.

A protest march against "migrant crime" was held in Pretoria on February 24 and resulted in violent clashes between crowds of young South African men and migrants from elsewhere in Africa, including Nigerians and Somalis.

Attacks against foreigners and foreign-run businesses have erupted regularly in recent years in South Africa, fuelled by the country's high unemployment and poverty levels.

President Jacob Zuma called for calm and restraint, saying that migrants should not be used as a scapegoat for the country's widespread crime problem.

-Aljazeera

California joins lawsuit challenging Trump’s latest travel Ban

The US state of California has become the seventh state to join a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban.

On Monday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra joined state attorneys in Washington, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Massachusetts and Minnesota in challenging the new order, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“Last month, our courts put a lid on the unconstitutional and un-American Trump Muslim travel ban because Americans stood up and demanded it,” Becerra said in a statement.

Furthermore, he said, “The victory for lawful permanent residents and current visa holders was welcome news for everyone, especially the victims’ families. But the fight for fair and lawful treatment of all who would seek permission to enter our country is not over."

The states asked James Robart, a US federal judge in Seattle who had ordered a temporary nationwide halt to the first controversial ban, to block the new order.

However, the Seattle judge has declined to immediately freeze the new executive order, saying that a formal complaint over the revised travel ban, which goes into effect March 16, needed to be filed before he can make a decision.

Hawaii was first to file a lawsuit against the revised travel ban, saying the executive order will harm the state’s Muslim population, foreign college students and tourist sector.

A hearing on the state’s request will be heard on Wednesday.

The new order maintains a 90-day ban on travel to the US by citizens of Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, but excludes Iraq and applies the restriction only to new visa applicants. It also removed an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.

In his statement, Becerra said the order is still unconstitutional, despite the changes.

“The Trump administration may have changed the text of the now-discredited Muslim travel ban, but they didn’t change its unconstitutional intent and effect,” he said.

“It is still an attack on people — women and children, professors and business colleagues, seniors and civic leaders — based on their religion and national origin,” he added.

The Justice Department has argued that the new order “falls outside the scope” of the original injunction. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the travel ban a lawful and proper exercise of presidential authority and vowed to enforce and defend it, adding that US attorneys who disagreed were welcome to leave.

-PressTV

Afghan forces free 32 detainees from Taliban prison in Helmand

Afghan security forces have launched an attack on a prison controlled by Taliban militants in the country’s restive south, freeing up to 32 detainees.

Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said special forces stormed the Taliban-run prison in Nad Ali district in the southern troubled province of Helmand late on Sunday after gathering intelligence that the militants had been holding dozens of civilians and security personnel in captivity there.

Four of those freed were policemen and the rest were civilians, according to a statement by the ministry.

In a similar raid last May, Afghan special forces freed more than 60 prisoners held by Taliban in the same province, which has long been a stronghold of the militant group.

Over the past months, Afghan security forces have been busy foiling attacks by Taliban in Helmand and the northern city of Kunduz, the capital of a province with the same name.

Helmand has long been a stronghold of the group.

The militant group lost its grip over Afghanistan in the 2001 US-led military invasion, but security has not been delivered to the country despite the presence of foreign boots on Afghan soil.

-PressTV

South Sudan rebels kidnap eight local aid workers: military

South Sudanese rebels have kidnapped eight locals working for a U.S. charity and are demanding aid deliveries as ransom, a military spokesman said on Monday, as food in the famine-hit nation looks increasingly likely to become a weapon of war.

The aid workers were taken from a village near Mayendit, about 420 miles (680 km) northeast of the capital of Juba, Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang told Reuters.

"The rebels attacked and abducted eight local staff from Samaritan's Purse and they are being held to ransom. They have demanded that the organisation takes aid to them," he said.

No one at the charity was available for comment.

Clashes between the army and rebels killed at least 23 people and injured 56 in the same area on Sunday, Koang said, with the insurgents attacking government positions, looting and setting fire to houses in the oil-rich Bieh state.

"They attacked our position on Sunday. Our forces fought back in self defence and managed to repulse the attackers," he said.

A rebel spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, has been mired in civil war since President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, sacked his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, in 2013.

The fighting has split much of the country along ethnic lines and paralysed agriculture, prompting the U.N. to declare last month that parts of the country are suffering from famine.

-Reuters

At least 50 people killed in garbage dump landslide in Ethiopia

 Desperate parents scrabbled through a towering pile of fetid garbage in the Ethiopian capital on Monday, screaming the names of missing children buried in a landslide after a mound of trash collapsed on an informal settlement killing at least 50.

"My babies, my babies, my little daughter," cried one man wandering through the site, tears streaming down his face. Neighbours said he had lost four children.

The landslide late on Saturday also destroyed 49 dwellings and left 28 people injured, city spokesman Amare Mekonen said.

Hundreds of people live on the 50-year-old Reppi dump, the city's only landfill site, scavenging for food and items they can sell such as recyclable metal.

The tragedy highlights the desperate poverty that drags down many Ethiopian families despite the country's rapid economic growth and government moves to position the East African nation as a regional power.

On Monday, rescuers used bulldozers to move piles of trash as hundreds of people gathered at the scene, weeping and praying. Some dug through the garbage with their hands.

A ripple of dread ran through the crowd as a body was unearthed and taken away, wrapped in a sheet. Earlier, residents angrily turned on journalists filming the scene, driving them away with stones.

Meselu Damte, the neighbour of the weeping man, said he lost his wife and four children.

"Their bodies were found in the morning," she said. "There are still houses that are to be found and many of my neighbours are inside."

Ethiopia is one of Africa's fastest growing economies, largely fuelled by government-driven investment, but the drive to industrialise has also stoked discontent among those who feel left behind.

In October, the government imposed a national state of emergency after more than 500 people were killed in protests in Oromiya region as anger over a development scheme for the capital sparked broader anti-government demonstrations.

-Reuters

Mubarak to be released from detention

Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown as president of Egypt in an uprising in 2011, will be released from detention in a military hospital, the public prosecutor ruled on Monday, his lawyers and judicial sources said.

"He will go to his home in Heliopolis," Mubarak's lawyer Farid El Deeb said, adding the ageing former president would likely be released Tuesday or soon after.

Mubarak was cleared of murder charges this month in his final trial, having faced various charges ranging from corruption to ordering the killing of protesters who ended his 30-year-rule.

He had one more jail sentence to serve but was cleared after serving time for the murder charges, judicial sources and the state news agency said.

The prosecution subtracted the time served in the murder case from the time he was meant to serve for a separate case in which he was found guilty of appropriating funds reserved for maintaining presidential palaces.

Mubarak was originally sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for conspiring to murder 239 demonstrators during the 18-day revolt - an uprising that sowed chaos and created a security vacuum but also inspired hope for democracy and social justice.

An appeals court ordered a retrial that culminated in 2014 in the case against Mubarak and his senior officials being dropped. An appeal by the public prosecution led to a final retrial by the Court of Cassation, the highest in the country, which acquitted him on March 2.

-Reuters

UN warns Burundi’s Nkurunziza

Any attempt by President Pierre Nkurunziza to seek a fourth term in office risks undermining collective efforts to find a sustainable solution to the political crisis in Burundi, says the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General for Conflict Prevention, Jamal Benomar.

Benomar spoke while presenting the Secretary-General’s Report on Burundi to the Security Council just as he expressed concern about the worsening human rights situation in the country.

The senior UN official, warned that political crisis in Burundi has continued to deepen amid serious human rights violations, mass displacements of people and economic degradation.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had documented allegations of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances, as well as cases of torture and ill-treatm0ent, he said.

Benomar added that there had been more than 210 cases of enforced disappearances between October 2016 and January 2017.

According to him, many live in fear of the Imbonerakure, the ruling party’s youth militia.

“On the humanitarian front, the number of people needing assistance in 2016 had reached three million – or 26 per cent of the population – and there had been a four-fold increase in the number of those who were food insecure.

“Some 8.2 million people – or 75 per cent of the population – were affected by malaria, he said, adding that almost 390,000 Burundians had fled the country since the start of the crisis.”

He said the interim report of the internal dialogue led by the Government-established National Commission for Inter-Burundian Dialogue was close to completion had reached a number of conclusions that could undermine the Arusha Agreement.

According to Benomar, the interim report states that the majority of citizens demanded an end to presidential term limits and favoured amendment of the Constitution, which opposition and civil society groups rejected.

Benjamin Mkapa, East African Community Facilitator of the Inter-Burundi Dialogue and former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, said he had worked to bring the parties together to resume “the spirit and dictates” of the Arusha Agreement and the Constitution.

While both sides agreed that those instruments must form the basis for progress, the opposition believed the Government had narrowed the political space, Mkapa said.

However, Albert Shingiro, Permanent Representative of Burundi to the UN, rejected some aspects of the report, notably that Nkurunziza would seek a fourth mandate, saying the President was currently exercising his second mandate.

Shingiro alleged “unwise” use of the term “militia” to describe young people affiliated with the ruling party, which was not in line with the language of past UN resolutions.

“The Council had never used that loaded word having previously used the more balanced term ‘youth affiliated with political parties,” he said.

Shingiro had earlier accused the UN of being concerned about Nkurunziza’s fourth term citing presidents in Africa seeking fifth, sixth and seventh terms.

-NAN

White House intruder troubled, says Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump has said that Jonathan Tran, 26, who scaled an outer-perimeter fence on the White House complex on Friday night was a troubled person.

Trump, who made the remarks on Saturday, said he appreciated the Secret Service efforts and that the accused is disturbed.

“The secret service did a fantastic job last night,”Trump said.

On the intruder, the president added that  “he was a troubled person. It was very sad”.

Tran climbed a White House fence on Friday night and gained access to the complex’s south grounds before being arrested, the Secret Service said on Saturday.

The service said the incident occurred at about 11:38 p.m. on Friday while Trump was at the White House.

The Secret Service also said Tran scaled an outer-perimeter fence on the White House complex’s southeast side, near the Treasury Building, and was arrested without further incident by an officer in the agency’s Uniformed Division.

The intruder was carrying a backpack and purportedly got close to the White House’s south portico residence entrance, near the Washington Monument.

No hazardous material was found inside the backpack, and a subsequent search of the complex grounds resulted in “nothing of concern to security operations,” the Secret Service said.

The agency also said that the suspect had no “previous history” with the agency.

Tran, who reportedly had a California driver’s license, told Secret Service officers that he was at the White House to see Trump.

“No, I am a friend of the President. I have an appointment,” the suspect said when approached by an officer, according to a report released on Saturday by the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.

Asked how he got there, the suspect told officers: “I jumped the fence”.

-NAN

Trump barrels ahead with plan to gut 'Obamacare'

President Donald Trump vowed Saturday to press ahead with a controversial plan, slowed by bickering within his Republican party, to repeal Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.

"We are making great progress with healthcare. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

Trump, who spent part of Saturday golfing in Virginia, told reporters that he spent part of the day strategizing with his White House team on the health care overhaul.

The president has thrown his full weight behind a contested plan by House Republicans to replace Obamacare, battling to overcome resistance from the party's right wing in hopes of meeting a key campaign pledge.

On Saturday he dispatched his top lieutenant, Vice President Mike Pence, to the southern state of Kentucky to make a pitch for the beleaguered proposal.

"Here are the heart-breaking facts: today, Americans are paying $3,000 more a year on average for health insurance than the day Obamacare was signed into law," Pence told a crowd in the city of Louisville.

"Last year alone, premiums spiked by 25 percent and millions of Americans have lost their health insurance plans and lost their doctors," Pence said, touting the Republican reform plan, unveiled just this past Monday, as the solution.

"We're going to give Americans more choices. We'll expand health savings accounts," Pence declared.

"Under President Trump's leadership, we're actually also going to finally allow Americans to purchase health insurance across state lines -- the way you buy life insurance, the way you buy car insurance."

Barack Obama's signature health insurance reform bill was the crowning domestic achievement of his presidency.
GETTY IMAGES/AFP/File / WIN MCNAMEEU.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol March 9, 2017 in Washington, DC


But like much of the rest of his legacy, it has come under attack from Trump, who has made dismantling it one of his top goals.

Republicans' market-driven plan to replace it, however, has been roundly criticized by some members of their own party -- especially in the US Senate -- and also has been met with consternation from conservative pundits.

"The Republican health plan would make America's economic chasm worse. It would cut health subsidies that go to the poor while eliminating the net investment income tax, which benefits only the top one percent," right-of-center political columnist David Brooks wrote in the New York Times this week.

Democrats were no less harsh in their assessment of the Republican health care reform plan.

"They're calling it the American Health Care Act: the AHCA. But they should call it the BBBA: the Big Breaks for Billionaires Act," said Congresswoman Cheri Bustos on Saturday.

In their plan, which "takes coverage away from the people who need it the most, Washington Republicans found a way to give massive tax breaks to the CEOs of health insurance companies, as well as to America's billionaires," Bustos said.

-AFP

UN warns of worst humanitarian crisis since WWII

The United Nations is warning that the world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II, with more than 20 million people facing starvation and famine in four countries.

The world body's humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien called Friday for an urgent mobilization of funds -- $4.4 billion by July -- for northeastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen to "avert a catastrophe."

"Otherwise, many people will predictably die from hunger, livelihoods will be lost and political gains that have been hardwon over the last few years will be reversed," O'Brien said in his stark warning to the UN Security Council.

"Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease. Children stunted and out of school. Livelihoods, futures and hope will be lost."

He called war-wracked Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world," with two thirds of the population, or 18.8 million people -- three million more than in January -- in need of assistance and more than seven million with no regular access to food.

AFP/File / ASHRAF SHAZLYSouth Sudanese refugees at a "Refugee Waiting Centre" in Al-Eligat area along the border in Sudan's White Nile state

The conflict in Yemen has left more than 7,400 people dead and 40,000 wounded since an Arab-state coalition intervened on the government's side against rebels in March 2015, according to UN figures.

In just the past two months alone, more than 48,000 people have fled fighting in the Arab world's poorest country, according to O'Brien, as it grapples with a proxy war fought by archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

- 'Arbitrarily denying' access -

During recent meetings, O'Brien said senior leaders in both parties agreed to provide continuous humanitarian access and respect international humanitarian law.

He noted that 4.9 million people received food assistance last month alone.

"Yet all parties to the conflict are arbitrarily denying sustained humanitarian access and politicize aid," he added.

AFP/File / Albert Gonzalez FarranA woman collects grains left on the ground after food distribution in Ganyiel

"Already, the humanitarian suffering that we see in Yemen today is caused by the parties and proxies and if they don't change their behavior now, they must be held accountable for the inevitable famine, unnecessary deaths and associated amplification in suffering that will follow."

He noted that despite assurances from all parties that he would obtain safe passage to the flashpoint city of Taiz, he was in fact denied access and came under gunfire after retreating to a short distance away.

A total of $2.1 billion are needed to reach 12 million people with life-saving assistance and protection in Yemen this year, according to O'Brien, who noted that just six percent of those funds have been received so far.

He announced that a ministerial-level pledging event for Yemen will take place in Geneva on April 25, to be chaired by UN chief Antonio Guterres.

- Politics behind 'man-made famine' -

During his visit last week to South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, O'Brien said he found a situation that is "worse than it has ever been."

"The famine in South Sudan is man-made," he added.

"Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine -- as are those not intervening to make the violence stop."

AFP / ASHRAF SHAZLYSouth Sudanese refugees at the "Refugee Waiting Centre" in Al-Eligat

He said more than 7.5 million people need assistance, an increase of 1.4 million fro last year. And some 3.4 million people are displaced, including nearly 200,000 who have fled South Sudan since January alone.

More than half the population of Somalia -- 6.2 million people -- need humanitarian assistance and protection, including 2.9 million at risk of famine.

Nearly one million children under the age of five will be "acutely malnourished" this year, according to the humanitarian chief, who also visited the country.

"What I saw and heard during my visit to Somalia was distressing -- women and children walk for weeks in search of food and water," O'Brien said.

AFP/File / ALBERT GONZALEZ FARRANAgop Manut (11 months), at the clinic run by Doctors without Borders (MSF) in Aweil, Northern Bahr al Ghazal, South Sudan, last October

"They have lost their livestock, water sources have dried up and they have nothing left to survive on. With everything lost, women, boys, girls and men now move to urban centers."

In northeastern Nigeria, O'Brien said 10.7 million people need humanitarian aid, including 7.1 million people who are "severely food insecure."

The humanitarian emergency afflicting the area was triggered by the Boko Haram insurgency, which erupted in Nigeria in 2009. Poor governance and climate change have also been powerful contributors to the crisis.

-AFP

The conflict, which has left around 20,000 people dead and forced more than 2.6 million others to flee their homes, has aggravated an already difficult humanitarian situation in one of the poorest regions of the world.

Four children drown in FCT

Four children – Jinkai Hakila, 10, Bridget Ibrahim, 11, Precious Ezra, 14 and Azumi Daniel, 16, were on Saturday found drowned in Danko River, Galadimawa Community, FCT suburb.

A correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), who visited the community, reports that residents were thrown into mourning following the ugly incident.

The four deceased and other children were at the river for washing before the incident occurred.

Some eye witnesses told NAN that the incident happened at about 11 a.m. when the children were still washing in the river.

Miss Blessing Elisha, 14, an eye witness, said that they were together at the river washing while others were playing.

She said several efforts made to stop the children from playing in the water yielded no result before the incident.

“I actually did not see them entering the water because I was busy washing, suddenly I was called that three of them had entered the river.

“It was then I looked up and saw the fourth one going in and an attempt made to rescue her looked like I was getting drowned.

“Then I left her and ran to call for help,” she said.

Mr Alhassan Abdulwahab, one the first people that responded to the distress call, said it took about three hours to get their corpses out of the river.

He said the information gathered from other children at the scene showed that the youngest of the deceased, Hakila was the first to enter the river.

He said other children were drowned while attempting to rescue their colleagues.

“We came to the scene of the incident immediately we got the information, and it took some time before we discovered their corpses because our nets were already in the river for fishing.

“It was after I pulled out my net with a very big fish in it that I saw the four corpses in the same area with their stomach not swollen,” Abdulwahab said.

NAN reports that the four corpses were buried by the river side in line with the tradition of the community. 

-NAN

Aid groups criticise South Sudan for $10,000 visa fees

International aid groups have criticised South Sudan's decision to sharply increase foreign worker visa fees, warning it would aggravate a humanitarian crisis in the famine-hit country.

South Sudan's government recently announced it would charge $10,000 for foreigners working in a "professional" capacity, $2,000 for "blue collar" employees and $1,000 for "casual workers" from March 1.

"The government and the army have largely contributed to the humanitarian situation. And now, they want to create profit from the crisis they have created," Elizabeth Deng, South Sudan researcher with Amnesty International, said on Saturday.

She said there were hundreds of aid workers operating in the country, and that the new visa costs "could further hinder their critical work on the ground".

South Sudan, formed in 2011 following a split from the north, declared famine in two counties in late February.

The United Nations said on Saturday more than 7.5 million people were in need of assistance in the country.

The crisis has "man-made" origins, according to the UN and humanitarian organisations groups, as a civil war that started in 2013 has forced people to flee, disrupted agriculture, sent prices soaring and cut off aid agencies from the worst-hit areas.

Humanitarian groups also say their workers have been subject to harassment and attacks.

Julien Schopp, director of humanitarian practice at InterAction, which groups 180 NGOs working worldwide, sid if the fee hike measure :is put into practice, it will be impossible for humanitarian workers to pay this kind of sum".

Schopp said NGOs were still pressing the government to provide details, notably on whether workers with current work permits would have to re-apply for new ones under the new fee structure.

Michael Makuei, South Sudan's information minister, said on Thursday the new fees for foreign workers were already in effect and confirmed they applied to aid workers.

The UN defines famine as a situation in which at least a fifth of the households in a region face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent, and two or more people in every 10,000 are dying each day.

-Aljazeera

South Sudan's Kiir says he has pardoned two jailed generals

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir said on Friday he had pardoned two senior government officials and promised to release other political prisoners, as his rule faces surging resistance, warfare and famine.

"I did not come to speak politics. I have come to pardon Gen. Elias Waya and Gen. Andrea Dominic,” Kiir said at a gathering in the capital Juba.

"Any other political detainees, I will release them all tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.”

Waya is a former governor of Wau state in the country's northwest and Dominic was his deputy. They were arrested in June 2016 and have since been detained at a military facility in Juba. Officials have never given a reason for their detention.

South Sudan, Africa's youngest nation, was first plunged into war in December 2013 when a power struggle between Kiir and his then deputy Riek Machar turned into a military confrontation.

The ensuing two-year conflict was ended by a peace pact in August 2015. Nearly a year ago Machar returned to Juba and his old post, but lingering animus between the two men, who hail from rival tribes, exploded into fighting between their forces again in Juba in June.

War and lawlessness have since uprooted an estimated three million people and decimated the economy. Failed harvests in traditional food basket areas have triggered famine in a country rich in oil resources.

On Monday disaffected Lieutenant General Thomas Cirillo Swaka accused Kiir of turning the country's military into a "tribal army", launched a new rebel National Salvation Front and vowed to topple him. 

-Reuters

Gabon opposition rejects president's call for talks to ease tensions

Gabonese President Ali Bongo has offered to hold talks with opposition parties in an apparent bid to ease tensions over his contested re-election last year, but his main political rival swiftly rejected the call for dialogue.

Responding to a presidency statement issued late on Friday, opposition leader Jean Ping branded the proposal for talks starting on March 28 as a "masquerade" and said he would not participate.

Ping, a former African Union chairman, accuses Bongo of cheating in order to win re-election in the August 2016 election and of using security forces to violently suppress protests in the weeks that followed.

Gabon's Constitutional Court rejected his allegations of vote-rigging, but international observers have also criticised the poll and the European Parliament in February called the results "extremely doubtful" though stopped short of imposing sanctions.

Bongo first came to power in 2009 after the death of his long-ruling father Omar Bongo.

Unlike some of its neighbours, the central African oil producer has little history of internal violence since independence from France in 1960, partly due to the latter's unwavering support for Omar Bongo in exchange for privileged commercial access.

Barring post-electoral violence that killed several people in the immediate aftermath of poll results in September, the recent tensions in the country have been fairly contained.

Strikes have affected the country's 220,000 barrel per day crude output in recent weeks, however, and the government sent security forces to intervene.

-Reuters

Madagascar cyclone death toll rises to 38: official

At least 38 people have been killed by Cyclone Enawo that struck Madagascar this week, according to an official of the country's disaster management department.

"The damage is enormous wherever the cyclone has gone," Thierry Venty, executive secretary of the National Bureau of Risk and Disaster Management, said late on Friday on national television.

He said 38 people had been killed countrywide by the cyclone, including a family who died in a landslide, while an estimated 153,000 people have been displaced by storm waters.

Enawo hit Madagascar's vanilla-producing northeastern coast on Tuesday morning, destroying roads and cutting off communications with Antalaha district, which has a population of 230,000 people.

More than 116,000 people have been directly affected by the cyclone, but Venty did not say how many of those were displaced or had their property damaged.

Late on Thursday, the meteorological office said the cyclone's power had "significantly weakened" according to a bulletin from the country's meteorological office, with the storm moving at speeds of 45-50 kph (28-31 miles per hour).

-Reuters