Africa
U.K-Egypt: Mother of jailed activist hospitalised amid hunger strike
The mother of a pro-democracy activist imprisoned in Egypt is seriously ill in a London hospital after resuming a hunger strike aimed at pressing for her son’s release, her family said Friday. Laila Soueif was admitted to St Thomas’s Hospital on Thursday night with dangerously low blood sugar levels. “The bottom line is, we’re losing her,” her daughter, Sanaa Souief, said outside the hospital. She added: “(Prime Minister) Keir Starmer needs to act now. Not tomorrow, not Monday, now, right now.”
Laila Soueif has been on hunger strike since September 29 to protest the imprisonment of Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a British-Egyptian dual national who has been in prison in Egypt since September 2019. He was sentenced in December 2021 to five years in prison for spreading false news and should have been released last year, but Egyptian authorities refused to count the more than two years he had spent in pre-trial detention and ordered him held until January 2027.
Laila Souief spent weeks camped outside Britain’s Foreign Office and the prime minister’s Downing Street office to highlight her son’s case. She was previously admitted to hospital in February, with doctors warning she was at “high risk of sudden death.” She agreed in early March to move to a partial hunger strike after Starmer pledged to press Egypt to release her son. She resumed her full hunger strike on May 20, saying: “Nothing has changed, nothing is happening.”
The family says Souief has lost 42% of her bodyweight during the 242-day hunger strike. They say she has received glucagon treatment, which induces the liver to break down stored fat to obtain glucose, but continues to refuse glucose, which would provide her with calories. Abdel-Fattah has been on his own hunger strike for 90 days following his mother’s admission to hospital in February. Thousands of critics of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi have been locked up under dire conditions after unjust trials, human rights groups say.
The British government said that Starmer raised Abdel-Fattah’s case in a call with the Egyptian president last week, and Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer discussed it with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty on Sunday. “We are concerned to hear of Laila’s hospitalization. We remain in regular contact with Laila and her family and have checked on her welfare,” the Foreign Office said in a statement. “We are committed to securing Alaa Abdel-Fattah’s release and continue to press for this at the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”
Delegations from Russia and Ukraine will meet in Turkey on Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks.
The Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was in Istanbul for the meeting, according to Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said in a message posted on the Ukrainian Embassy Whatsapp group.
The Russian delegation headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, arrived on Sunday evening, Russian state media reported.
Turkish officials said the meeting would start at 1 p.m. local time (10:00 GMT), with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan presiding over the talks and officials from the Turkish intelligence agency also present.
However, Ukrainian spokesperson Tykhyi said the start would be at midday local time.It was not immediately possible to clarify the discrepancy.
Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on resolving key conditions for stopping the war.
Fierce fighting has in the meantime continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.
It comes as a Ukrainian drone attack destroyed more than 40 Russian planes deep in Russia’s territory, Ukraine’s Security Service said on Sunday, while Moscow pounded Ukraine with missiles and drones just hours before the new round of talks.
Gabon is set to stop exporting raw manganese by 2029, as part of a national strategy to boost local industry and reduce dependency on unprocessed resource exports. The government announced the move as part of efforts to transform its economy. Manganese, alongside oil and timber, is one of Gabon’s top revenue sources.
The country is currently the world’s second-largest producer of the mineral.By halting raw exports, Gabon aims to develop its domestic processing capacity, create skilled jobs, and retain more value from its natural resources.Officials have given the industry three years to invest in local transformation facilities.
A public-private investment fund is also being planned to support the transition.In a similar move, the government will ban chicken meat imports from 2027 to encourage local poultry production. Despite being one of Africa’s wealthiest nations per capita, a significant portion of Gabon’s population continues to live in poverty.
The new policies are part of broader reforms aimed at reducing economic inequality and building a more self-reliant future.
After their bodies were dismembered over a century ago and their skulls sent to Germany in racially-biased phrenology research, the remains of 19 African Americans have been returned to New Orleans for a proper send off. Sometime in the 1880’s New Orleans physician Dr. Henry D. Schmidt sent 19 crania to Leipzig, Germany for research.
The research believed skull shape could determine personality traits. In 2023, researchers with University of Leipzig began organizing the return of 19 skulls. “It is a demonstration of our own morality here in New Orleans and in Leipzig with the professors there who wanted to do something to restore the dignity of these people,” historian Eva Baham said.
Baham, who led a team of researchers, believe these 19 people died of natural causes. A jazz funeral in New Orleans was planned in their honour.
Russia strikes Ukraine with deadly attacks ahead of planned Istanbul talks with Kyiv
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