Brugelette (AFP) – Belgium’s Pairi Daiza animal park shows off Nova, a southern white rhinoceros, who was born on 2 January 2025 weighing 75 kilos. The southern white rhino is a species native to southern Africa, vulnerable to poaching and the illegal ivory trade. Thanks to conservation efforts, the population of this species is now on the increase overall (with around 20,000 in captivity and in the wild), although its existence remains fragile.
Minsk (AFP) – Early voting gets underway in Belarus’s presidential election, which promises to see the extension of President Alexander Lukashenko’s 30-year rule. An unprecedented protest movement that rose up against him following the last elections in 2020 was suppressed by force, with many Belarusians were sentenced to long prison terms and hundreds of thousands of others fled the country.
Puerto Lindo (AFP) – A German aerospace engineer celebrates setting a world record for the longest time living underwater without depressurisation — 120 days in a submerged capsule off the coast of Panama. The record was previously held by American Joseph Dituri, who spent 100 days living in an underwater lodge in a Florida lagoon.
Davos (AFP) – The head of the UN’s Development Programme Achim Steiner says that the Israel-Hamas war has put back development in Gaza by 60 years. Around two-thirds of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been “entirely destroyed or damaged”, Steiner tells AFP in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Nzulo (AFP) – An armoured vehicle belonging to the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo burns in the DR Congo as fighting between the Rwandan-backed M23 and the Congolese army intensifies in the country’s east. Three South African peacekeepers have been killed.
Kiew (AFP) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says allies should work towards determining a format for any upcoming peace talks with Russia. He adds that “real results” cannot be achieved without Kyiv participating in negotiations.
Puerto Lindo (Panama) (AFP) – Inside the SeaPod Alpha Deep off the coast of Puerto Lindo, in Panama, German aerospace engineer Rudiger Koch, 59, hopes to break a world record. Koch, an admirer of Captain Nemo, has been submerged underwater for more than two months at a depth of 11 meters to break a Guinness World Record. Surrounded by fish, he intends to prove that it is possible to live peacefully under the ocean. IMAGES
Hargeisa (AFP) – In Hargeisa, the largest city in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland, traditional and religious values still influence societal norms. However, some women are breaking down those barriers by participating in sports.
Khost (Afghanistan) (AFP) – Afghanistan’s Taliban government rejects an arrest warrant sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its leaders. The ICC chief prosecutor said he was seeking arrest warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women, a crime against humanity. “The International Criminal Court can’t scare us,” Afghanistan’s First Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs, Mohammad Nabi Omari, says at a graduation ceremony in the eastern city of Khost.
Galway (Ireland) (AFP) – A violent storm hits the UK and Ireland with heavy rain and strong winds. The worst of the storm is impacting Scotland and the island of Ireland, with both put on high alert and schools ordered to close.
Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) – Speaking at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, Argentina’s President Javier Milei says he has found “comrades in this fight for the ideas of freedom”, in likeminded leaders such as US President Donald Trump, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Pristina (AFP) – A new museum opens in Kosovar capital Pristina, full of belongings and mementos from childhoods spent during the country’s conflict. Kosovo saw a bloody civil war from 1998-1999 between ethnic Albanian insurgents and Serbian armed forces. A decade after the war, majority-Albanian Kosovo declared independence, which Serbia and the Kosovo Serb minority do not recognise.
