Africa

Eritrea are included in the preliminary qualifying round draw for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations despite being unranked by world governing body Fifa.

Für eine Kotierung an der hiesigen Börse werden namhafte Unternehmen diskutiert. Dazu zählen der Chemiekonzern Syngenta und der Verpackungsspezialist Syntegon. Wir geben dir eine Übersicht.

Ein Mann raucht auf dem Balkon. Eine Stunde später brennt es. Der Schaden: riesig. Es folgt ein dreijähriger Rechtsstreit, der im finanziellen Ruin zu enden droht.

Die Show brachte den Moderator am Montagabend an den Rand der Verzweiflung: Ein Kandidat sitzt falsch. Dann verschwinden auch noch Mikrofone – Günther Jauch weiss nicht mehr, was er vom Abend halten soll.

Refugees by Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jan 13 2026 (IPS)

At the moment, ICE’s advancement in the U.S. is apparently dividing the nation’s population into desired and undesirable elements. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was born after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and intended to be a response to terrorism. However, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, federal immigration agents have become the president’s praetorian guard, implementing his immigration politics.

ICE has currently 22,000 employees, a number destined to grow thanks to new recruits. Its budget is USD 30 billion a year. During 2025, the agency’s spending on fire arms has grown 600 percent. Its agents generally act with their faces covered, and move around heavily armed, in unmarked vehicles.

ICE agent, photo from Huffington Post

In 2025, US deportations did last year surge with over 622,000 official removals and an additional 1.9 million self-deportations, totalling over 2.5 million people leaving the U.S. This forced migration has been likened to ethnic cleansing, i.e. the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a society ethnically homogenous. An interpretation which appears not to be entirely unreasonable considering President Trump’s constantly repeated rhetorics. Politics that might be compared to similar xenophobic statements from a number of so-called patriotic parties in Europe.

This while it has been indicated that between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians on Russian-occupied territories have been deported to Russia, including 260,000 children. Outside of Europe similar activities are taking place in several other areas. For example, in Gaza where from the beginning of the Gaza war on 13 October 2023, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) forced the evacuation of 1.1 million people from Northen Gaza, while the land strip has been bombed and destroyed.

We have to admit that after reaching catastrophic dimensions during the last century the phenomenon of ethnic cleansing is still with us. As the herd animals that we are, we humans have become afflicted with the unfortunate trait of dividing individuals into groups, which we judge and treat according to broad generalizations based on people’s group affiliation, regardless of their unique personality.

Given the xenophobic storms now raging in both in the U.S. and Europe, it may be appropriate to recall the human disasters that such behaviour has caused on their continents. The genocide that the indigenous people of the U.S. were subjected to is well known, and also when during World War II U.S. forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 U.S, citizens of Japanese descent in various concentration camps. Lesser known is probably the forced deportation of between 300,000 and 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939, forty to sixty percent of them were U.S, citizens and overwhelmingly children.

The European 20th century history of mass deportations and human slaughter is even darker. It began at the outskirts of the continent when Russian forces between 1863 and 1878 invaded Circassia by the Black Sea, systematically killing and deporting 95 to 97 percent of its population, resulting in the deaths of between 1 and 1.5 million. This was followed by the pogroms, i.e. mass killings of Jews, in for example Odessa (1881), Kishinev (1903), Kiev (1905), and Bialystok (1906), leaving more than 2,000 dead and resulting in a mass migration of Jews from the affected areas, worsened during the following civil war when 35,000 to 250,000 Jews were massacred between 1918 and 1920. At the same time the Bolshevik regime killed and/or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Don Cossacks.

After World War I between 90,000 and 300,000 Albanians were deported from Yugoslavia and up to 80,000 were killed during this new nation’s colonization of Kosovo. The expulsion and genocide of Armenians and Greeks which occurred in Turkish Anatolia both during and after World War I resulted in mass migrations and between 2 and 3 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians were killed. Over 1.2 million ethnic Greeks were expelled from Turkey in 1922-1924, while the Greeks expelled 400,000 Muslims.

Even worse was to come. Between 1935 and 1945, Nazi Germany systematically killed an estimated 130,500 Roma and Sinti people and between 1938 and 1945 more than 6 million Jews. During the same period Nazi German forces killed 3 million Ukrainians, 1,6 million Poles, 1,6 million Russians, 1,4 million Byelorussians. The German allies in Croatia massacred between 200,000 and 500,000 Serbs, as well as approximately 25,000 Roma/Sinti and 30,000 Jews. Their adversaries, the Serbs, killed 32,000 Croats and 33.000 Bosniaks.

The overwhelming part of all these victims were civilians, not combatants, and the estimations above are only some examples of massacres and deportations that occurred all over Europe during World War II.

In the Soviet Union (USSR), Stalin ordered the resettlement of more than 3,5 million ethnic minorities – Ukrainians, Volga Germans, Chechens, Balts, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Karachays, Turks, and Ingush. Many of them never returned to their homelands and up to 400,000 deaths due to these expulsions were archived by Soviet authorities.

Before that the Holodomor, a massive man-made famine from 1932 to 1933 had killed 3.5 to 5 million in Ukraine, as well as 62,000 in the Kuban area, while over 300,000 Ukrainians were deported to Kazakhstan, where many died.

All these numbers are just estimations and they might be higher or lower. However, we have to keep in mind that behind every single number we find cruelty and unimaginable suffering.

At the conclusion of World War I, it was borders that were invented and adjusted, while people were on the whole left in place, but during and after World War II what happened was rather the opposite – boundaries remained broadly intact (though USSR significantly expanded its territory) and people were moved instead … millions of them.

For example, 1.6 to 2 million Poles were by the invading Germans expelled from their lands, not counting millions of slave workers deported from Poland to the German Reich. At the same time the USSR transferred 380,000 Poles from their home territories, while 410 000 Finns had to leave Karelia, ceded to the USSR.

On top of that, losses on the battle fields were enormous – Soviet Union lost 6 million soldiers, Germany 4 million, Italy 400,000, and Romania 300,000. If combining military and civilian losses Poland lost one person in 5 of her pre-war population, Yugoslavia one in 8 and Greece one in 14, compared with one in 15 in Germany and 1one in 77 in France.

Nazi Germany captured 5.5 million Soviet soldiers and out of them 3.3 million died in the camps, of the 750,000 German soldiers captured by USSR 20,000 survived.

All this cruelty continued after the war and it was now members of ethnic groups connected with loosing nations who were lumped together into one unit, where individuals came to suffer, both the guilty and the innocent ones.

At the Potsdam Conference from 17 July to 2 August 1945 the heads of the leading Allies – the USSR, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. – agreed upon “orderly and humane” expulsions of the “German populations” from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but not Yugoslavia and Romania. As a result, between 13,5 and 16.5 million “ethnic Germans” were expulsed from Central and Eastern European countries.

Estimates of the number of those who died during this process are being debated and range from a half to 3 million. As an example, investigations by a joint German and Czech commission of historians did in 1995 established that 2.1 million ethnic Germans were deported from Czechoslovakia to Germany. The death toll was at least 15,000 persons, but it could range up to a maximum of 30,000 dead, if one assumes that many deaths were not reported.

Yugoslavia was a particularly horrifying example of ethnic cleansing both during and after World War II. As mentioned above Croats and Serbs constantly massacred each other. During the so called foibe massacres (foibes are sink holes common in the region and many victims were thrown into them) ethnic Italians were killed by Communist partisans. During and after the war these crimes caused an exodus amounting to between 230,000 and 350,000 “ethnic Italians”, estimates of massacred victims range from 3,000 to 11,000.

These are just a few examples of expulsions and massacres of some Europeans, without mentioning the horrible fate of many Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Turks, and many others who happened to be minorities in countries where they had lived for centuries. While considering this often forgotten, or at least unmentioned, history of millions of unwelcomed victims and refugees criss-crossing a bombed out and miserable Europe it is difficult to comprehend that so many descendants of these suffering people are now gathering around xenophobic parties which make refugeeism, whether for one’s life, or due to general misery, a crime.

Contemplating the heavily armed ICE agents in the U.S. “liberating” their nation from “foreign elements” you might easily evoke images of equally armed SS troopers, Soviet NKVD agents, Romanian Iron Guards, Croatian Ustaše and many similar units who expelled, and often killed, ethnic groups all over Europe.

Main sources: Judt, Tony (2005) Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945. London: Vintage. Lieberman, Benjamin (2013) Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Totten, Samuel et al., eds. (1997) Century of Genocide; Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. New York: Garland Publishing.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: Oxfam

By Oxfam
LONDON, Jan 13 2026 (IPS)

The richest 1% have exhausted their annual carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – only ten days into the year, according to new analysis from Oxfam. The richest 0.1% already used up their carbon limit on the 3rd January.

This day – named by Oxfam as ‘Pollutocrat Day’ – highlights how the super-rich are disproportionately responsible for driving the climate crisis.

The emissions of the richest 1% generated in one year alone will cause an estimated 1.3 million heat-related deaths by the end of the century. Decades of over consumption of emissions by the world’s super rich are also causing significant economic damage to low and lower-middle income countries, which could add up to $44 trillion by 2050.

To stay within the 1.5 degrees limit, the richest 1% would have to slash their emissions by 97% by 2030. Meanwhile, those who have done the least to cause the climate crisis – including communities in poorer and climate-vulnerable countries, Indigenous groups, women and girls – will be the worst impacted.

“Time and time again, the research shows that governments have a very clear and simple route to drastically slash carbon emissions and tackle inequality: by targeting the richest polluters.

By cracking down on the gross carbon recklessness of the super-rich, global leaders have an opportunity to put the world back on track for climate targets and unlock net benefits for people and the planet,” said Oxfam’s Climate Policy Lead Nafkote Dabi.

On top of their lifestyle emissions, the super-rich are also investing in the most polluting industries. Oxfam’s research finds that each billionaire carries, on average, an investment portfolio in companies that will produce 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 a year, further locking the world into climate breakdown.

The wealthiest individuals and corporations also hold disproportionate power and influence. The number of lobbyists from fossil fuel companies attending the recent COP summit in Brazil, for example, was more than any delegation apart from the host nation, with 1600 attendees.

“The immense power and wealth of super-rich individuals and corporations have also allowed them to wield unjust influence over policymaking and water down climate negotiations.” Dabi added.

Oxfam calls on governments to slash the emissions of the super-rich and make rich polluters pay through:

Increase taxes on income and wealth of the Super-rich and proactively support and engage on the negotiations for the UN Convention of International Tax Cooperation to deliver a fairer global architecture.

Excess profit taxes on fossil fuel corporations. A Rich Polluter Profits Tax on 585 oil, gas and coal companies could raise up to US $400 billion in its first year, equivalent to the cost of climate damages in the Global South.

Ban or punitively tax carbon-intensive luxury items like super-yachts and private jets. The carbon footprint of a super-rich European, accumulated from nearly a week of using super yachts and private jets, matches the lifetime carbon footprint of someone in the world’s poorest 1 percent

Build an equal economic system that puts people and planet first by rejecting dominant neoliberal economics and moving towards an economy based on sustainability and equality. 

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court, has confirmed that countries have a legal obligation to reduce emissions enough to protect the universal rights to life, food, health, and a clean environment. 

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2026 (IPS)

Judging by the mass US withdrawal from 66 UN entities, including UN conventions and international treaties, is it remotely possible that the unpredictable Trump administration may one day decide to pull out of the UN, and force the Secretariat out of New York– despite the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement?

Besides the 66, the withdrawals also include the pullouts from the Human Rights Council, the WHO, UNRWA and UNESCO– while imposing drastic reductions in funding for the remaining UN entities the US has not yet formally exited.

So, will the United Nations, which has come under heavy fire, be far behind?

That possibility is strengthened by the critical views of the UN both by President Trump and senior US officials.

Dr Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on issues relating to the United Nations, told IPS even the U.S. presidents most hostile to the United Nations– like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush– recognized the importance of the world body in terms of advancing U.S. interests, including understanding the importance of maintaining the UN system as a whole, even while violating certain legal principles in particular cases.

Similarly, he pointed out, the United States was willing to participate in various UN bodies in an effort to wield influence, even while disagreeing with some of their policies or even their overall mandates.

“The Trump administration, however, appears to be rejecting the post-WWII international legal system as a whole. His statements, particularly since the attack on Venezuela, appear to be a throwback to the 19th-century imperial prerogatives and a rejection of modern international law.”

“As a result, it is possible that Trump could indeed pull the United States out of the United Nations and force the UN out of New York”, declared Dr Zunes.

Addressing the General Assembly last September, Trump remarked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted, “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS “this is dubious language about cutting inefficiency and fighting diversity wrapped up in red meat to feed President Trump’s base”.

It’s a ploy to use foreign affairs to distract voters for whom he has yet to deliver. The fact that the actual follow-up documents haven’t been received by the Secretary General tells you everything here. It fits a pattern of the President carving out maximalist positions and then getting very little in the end, he pointed out.

But it’s a bigger challenge, he said, on two fronts:

1. This is going to continue to REDUCE US influence at the UN rather than increase it. Stable foreign relations are based on credibility. The US continues to squander its reserves, and other countries will step into the vacuum.

2. This policy might have been a good social media post for voters, but makes little sense in practice. What the White House wants is a line-item veto over every single aspect of UN operations. But assessed contributions are not an ala carte menu, declared Edwards.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations, told IPS retreat from international institutions by the Trump Administration is an attack on the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who gave the people of the United States the New Deal and envisioned a bold framework for the establishment of the UN to overcome the horrors of the Second World War.

“Many of the impacted international institutions were built through the blood, sweat and tears of Americans. Pulling out of these institutions is an affront to their sacrifices and reverses decades of multilateral cooperation on peace, human rights, climate change and sustainable development,” he said.

Meanwhile, the attacks on the UN have continued unabated.

In an interview with Breitbart News, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said, “A quarter of everything the UN does, the United States pays for”.

“Is there money being well spent? I’d say right now, no, because it’s being spent on all of these other woke projects, rather than what it was originally intended to do, what President Trump wants it to do, and what I want it to do, which is focus on peace.”

Historically, the United States has been the largest financial contributor, typically covering around 22% of the UN’s regular budget and up to 28% of the peacekeeping budget.

Still, ironically, the US is also the biggest defaulter. According to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee, member states currently owe $1.87 billion of the $3.5 billion in mandatory contributions for the current budget cycle.

The former US House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York, a one-time nominee for the post of US Ambassador to the UN, was quoted as saying, “In the UN, Americans see a corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed institution more beholden to bureaucracy, process, and diplomatic niceties than the founding principles of peace, security, and international cooperation laid out in its charter.”

Meanwhile, in a veiled attack on the UN, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “What we term the “international system” is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance.”

Even those that once performed useful functions, he pointed out, have increasingly become inefficient bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests, he said.

“Not only do these institutions not deliver results, they obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems. The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,” declared Rubio

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Thursday's election highlights a demographic issue common to many African countries.

Thursday's election highlights a demographic issue common to many African countries.

Die Ex-Bachelorette liess ihre Bar in Chur von der Brandschutzpolizei prüfen. Ausserdem legte sie sich einen zusätzlichen Feuerlöscher zu. Einen Raum darf sie nun nach den Brandschutzregeln nicht mehr benutzen.

Diego Aponte gilt als zentraler Kopf hinter dem spektakulären Treffen des «Team Switzerland» mit Donald Trump im Oval Office. Dem Spross der Genfer Reederdynastie MSC hilft dabei ein exklusives Netzwerk.

Nach einer brutalen Verletzungsserie steht Tennis-Hoffnung Leandro Riedi in Australien vor seinem Comeback. Und er will sich neu ausrichten, verlässt dafür das gemachte Nest.

In einem Telefonat mit Donald Trump betont Mexiko-Präsidentin Sheinbaum die Souveränität Mexikos. Trump wirft ihr vor, aus Angst Drogenkartelle zu verschonen.

Auf Tiktok zeigt sich ein US-Amerikaner begeistert über seine Skiferien in der Schweiz. Für drei Tage auf dem Titlis inklusive Flug für seine ganze Familie habe er weniger gezahlt als für einen Skitrip im eigenen Land.

Rosita Salvador Mabuiango's mother was sheltering for days before giving birth perched above the water.

Eine 26-Jährige ist am Sonntagmittag bei Laax heftig mit einer Leitplanke kollidiert. Es stellte sich gemäss der Polizei heraus, dass sie betrunken war. Den Führerausweis musste sie gleich abgeben.

Das Inferno von Crans-Montana sorgt für Kritik an der Walliser Staatsanwaltschaft. Immer mehr Stimmen fordern einen ausserkantonalen Sonderstaatsanwalt. Das Wallis selbst sendet unterschiedliche Signale.

Kaum sind wir ins neue Jahr gestartet, gibt es bereits den ersten Food-Trend auf Social Media. Tiktok-Nutzer stapfen mit einem Topf in den Schnee, um dort afghanische Glace zuzubereiten. Hier erfährst du, wie du den viralen Wintersnack selbst ausprobieren kannst.

Le Bénin a levé 60 milliards de FCFA sur le marché financier régional de l'UMOA à l'issue d'une adjudication de Bons et Obligations assimilables du Trésor (BAT et OAT), clôturée jeudi 8 janvier 2026, selon les résultats officiels publiés par UMOA-Titres.

Le jeudi 8 janvier 2026, l'État du Bénin, par l'intermédiaire de son Trésor public et sous la supervision du Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances, a procédé à une double émission de Bons et Obligations Assimilables du Trésor (BAT et OAT) sur le marché financier de l'Union Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UMOA).

L'opération, pilotée par le Trésor public sous la supervision du ministère de l'Économie et des Finances, a suscité un intérêt soutenu des investisseurs régionaux. Le montant global des soumissions a atteint 78,24 milliards de FCFA, soit un taux de couverture de 130,41 % du montant mis en adjudication.

Au total, 60 milliards de FCFA ont été retenus, correspondant à un taux d'absorption de 76,68 %.
« Cette adjudication confirme l'attractivité des titres publics béninois sur le marché régional », selon une source financière.

Quatre instruments étaient proposés, répartis entre un bon du Trésor à court terme et trois obligations de moyen et long terme.

Le BAT à 91 jours, arrivant à échéance le 9 avril 2026, a mobilisé 22,37 milliards de FCFA sur 30,07 milliards sollicités, soit un taux d'absorption de 74,39 %. Le taux marginal s'est établi à 5,10 %, pour un taux moyen pondéré de 4,95 %.

Les OAT à trois ans, échéance janvier 2029, ont concentré la plus forte demande, avec 32,73 milliards de FCFA de soumissions.

Seuls 22,18 milliards ont été retenus, traduisant un taux d'absorption de 67,78 %.

Le prix marginal est ressorti à 97,50 %, pour un prix moyen pondéré de 98,30 %.
Les maturités longues ont, en revanche, été entièrement absorbées.

L'OAT à cinq ans (échéance janvier 2031) a permis de lever 8,15 milliards de FCFA, avec un prix marginal de 96,55 %.

L'OAT à sept ans (échéance janvier 2033) a permis de mobiliser 7,30 milliards de FCFA, à un prix marginal de 94,00 %.

Une participation active des investisseurs régionaux

Au total, 10 participants ont pris part à l'adjudication sur le BAT, contre 8 sur l'OAT 3 ans et 6 sur chacune des maturités longues. Le nombre total de soumissions s'est élevé à 43 ordres, traduisant une activité soutenue, notamment sur le segment court et moyen terme. Les investisseurs non compétitifs (ONC) ont représenté une part limitée des montants retenus, avec 772 millions de FCFA acceptés sur l'ensemble de l'opération.

Cette levée de fonds s'inscrit dans la stratégie de financement du budget de l'État pour 2026. Elle permet au Bénin de sécuriser ses ressources, tout en étalant sa dette sur plusieurs maturités.

Les taux servis, compris entre 5,70 % et 6,00 % pour les obligations, reflètent une prime de confiance accordée par les investisseurs au profil de crédit du Bénin, dans un contexte régional marqué par une sélectivité accrue. Avec cette opération, le Bénin confirme sa présence régulière et crédible sur le marché régional des titres publics, tout en consolidant sa relation avec les investisseurs institutionnels de l'UMOA.
M. M.

Global superstar Burna Boy claimed the prestigious Album of the Year award for his latest work No Sign of Weakness.