Connect with us

World News

Collision between two buses in Senegal: 39 dead, three days of national mourning

Published

on

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sylvie Claire / January 9, 2023

 

Thirty-nine people were killed and a hundred injured in Senegal in a collision between two buses, leading President Macky Sall to declare a three-day national mourning and to announce immediate measures to improve safety.
 
The accident, the deadliest in this West African country in recent years, occurred on Saturday night around 3:00 a.m. local time near the town of Kaffrine, about 250 km southeast of the capital Dakar, according to the fire department and local authorities.
 
The government announced on Sunday evening that the latest death toll from the accident in the town of Sikilo was 39, with 53 injured in hospital and 42 more slightly injured being treated in local health centers. “The two buses would have contained 139 passengers at the time of the accident,” the government said in a statement. Ten of the injured are in “vital emergency”, said President Sall after visiting the injured at the hospital in Kaffrine with his Prime Minister Amadou Ba.
 
More than 20 bodies have already been identified and will soon be returned to their families,” he added. The head of state, who had previously decided on “a three-day national mourning period starting Monday“, promised swift measures to avoid the repetition of a new “tragedy” of this kind. “We can not expose the lives of our compatriots in a transport system that disregards respect for human life,” said Sall.
 
From Monday the Prime Minister will convene an interministerial council to take measures on the condition of vehicles, technical control, the issuance of driving licenses or transport schedules, he said. “We are ready, of course, as a state to accompany the transport sector for the renewal of the fleet and the limitation of the ages of public transport vehicles that come from abroad,” he continued, assuring that the necessary measures would be “taken tomorrow.
 
The mayor of Kaffrine, Abdoulaye Saydou Sow, who is also the Minister of Urban Planning and Housing, and the public prosecutor of the neighboring city of Kaolack blamed the collision on a burst tire on one of the two buses, which then veered off course.
 
The main Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko, a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, said on Twitter to postpone a fundraising operation because of the accident and called on the authorities to “give priority attention” to road insecurity, a “scourge with disastrous human, social and economic consequences for the country.
 
Bus accidents are common in Africa, due to poorly maintained vehicles, bad roads, and driving errors, with many motorists holding licenses purchased from corrupt inspectors without ever having attended driving school.
 
Twenty-one people died Saturday night in East Africa in a bus accident on the border between Kenya and Uganda, Ugandan police said Sunday. The majority of the dead are Kenyan nationals, but there are also eight Ugandans. According to the police, 49 people were injured.
  
According to the first elements of the investigation, the driver lost control of the vehicle due to excessive speed.
 
The Ugandan government is preparing new measures to improve road safety after an increase in fatal accidents during the holiday season. According to the Ugandan police, 104 road accidents were recorded in just three days, from December 30 to January 1, resulting in 35 deaths and 114 injuries.

Chris TDL Organizations is a Multinational parent managing company or multiple marketing and brand management entities.

World News

At least 63 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees killed in Gaza

Published

on

At least 63 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees killed in Gaza, Magnate Daily
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Eva Deschamps / October 31, 2023

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, 63 employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have already lost their lives in the Gaza Strip. Ten aid workers have been killed in the last 72 hours, according to this new toll released by the agency on its website on Monday.
 
At least 22 UNRWA staff were also injured. Since October 7, 44 UNRWA facilities have also been destroyed. Of its 22 health centers, only nine are still operational, the UN agency said, warning that the provision of health care is made even more difficult by the very low fuel supply.
 
The UN agency had previously reported that several of its warehouses had been looted. “Due to the very limited aid available and overcrowded shelters, growing tensions are being reported within the displaced communities,” it stressed. Some 672,000 refugees are living in 149 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip, “in increasingly difficult conditions”. “The ability to provide vital assistance was further hampered by the 36-hour communications blackout between October 27 and 29”, UNRWA added.
 
In all, an estimated 1.4 million people have been displaced in the Gaza Strip. Over 120,000 of them have taken refuge in public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
 
“The aid currently available is insufficient to meet the most basic needs of displaced people and the communities hosting them”, warns the UN agency.
Continue Reading

World News

Mouse embryos grown in space for the first time

Published

on

Mouse embryos grown in space for the first time, Magnate Daily
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Sylvie Claire / October 31, 2023

This research into mammal reproduction in space could prove crucial for future solar system exploration missions.
 
Mouse embryos were grown on board the International Space Station (ISS) and developed normally, according to a Japanese study published in the scientific journal “iScience” on Saturday, October 28.
 
This is “the very first study to show that mammals might be able to thrive in space”, claim Yamanashi University and the Riken National Research Institute.
 
The researchers, including Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at Yamanashi University’s Center for Advanced Biotechnology, and a team from the Japanese space agency Jaxa, sent frozen mouse embryos aboard a rocket to the ISS in August 2021. The astronauts thawed the embryos at an early stage, using a specially designed device, and cultured them on board the station for four days.
 
The experiment “clearly demonstrated that gravity had no significant effect”, noted the researchers. After analyzing the blastocysts (cells that develop into fetuses and placentas) that were returned to their laboratories on Earth, they observed no particular changes in the state of DNA and genes.
 
“In the future, it will be necessary to transplant blastocysts grown in microgravity on the ISS into mice to see if the mice can give birth,” in order to confirm that the blastocysts are normal, say Yamanashi University and the Riken Institute.
 
This research could prove crucial for future space exploration and colonization missions. As part of its Artemis program, NASA plans to send humans back to the Moon to learn how to live there in the long term, and to prepare for a trip to Mars in the late 2030s.

 

Continue Reading

World News

Bobi, the world’s oldest dog, died aged 31

Published

on

Bobi, the world&#8217;s oldest dog, died aged 31, Magnate Daily
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Steph Deschamps / October 25, 2023

The world’s oldest dog died last weekend in Portugal. Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro de l’Alentejo, was 31 years and 165 days old, reports the British public broadcaster BBC on Monday.
 
Last February, Bobi entered the Guinness Book of Records as not only the oldest living dog, but also the oldest dog of all time.
 
The old record had been held for almost 100 years by Bluey from Australia. He died in 1939 at the age of 29 years and five months.
Bobi has spent his entire life with the Costa family in the village of Conqueiros, near the west coast of Portugal.
Continue Reading

Trending