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Hundreds of thousands of pigs have been culled by Nigerian farmers in response to an explosion of African swine fever (ASF). The outbreak began around Lagos and parts of neighbouring Ogun state earlier this year, pig farmers say, but has now spread to many other parts of the country.
In the absence of official data, farmers who spoke to the Guardian estimated that nearly a million pigs had been put down so far. Read more HERE.
The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 but it was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act finally banned the ownership of other human beings. However, 46,000 slave owners continued to benefit financially as the subsequent Slave Compensation Act provided £20m in payments – a sum worth billions in 2020 terms. Despite the name of the act, the former slaves were not compensated.
University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project shows that 10% to 20% of Britain’s wealthy can be identified as having had significant links to slavery. Read more HERE.
A number of people have been arrested by police investigating one of South Africa’s most notorious corruption scandals, the looting and collapse of VBS Mutual Bank.
VBS, which held the savings of many disadvantaged people and local municipalities, collapsed with more than £100m in debts in 2018. Much of the money had been siphoned into private bank accounts and some spent on property or luxury cars, investigators found. Read more HERE
If you happened to leave more than £150,000 worth of gold bars in a Swiss train, you can now come forward to claim it.
Authorities in the central city of Lucerne have said a package containing bars worth about 182,000 Swiss francs was found in a train that arrived from the northern town of St. Gallen in October, and efforts to find the owner failed.
The bars were then seized by Lucerne prosecutors. Regional authorities confirmed on Tuesday a statement from law enforcement over the weekend saying that any claimant has five years to report “justified claims” of ownership. The incident is eye-popping even for a wealthy Alpine country with a high cost, and standard, of living. Read more HERE.
In just a few weeks, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has forced Europe’s former colonial powers to reckon with the past, and few more so than Belgium. It has had some of the biggest anti-racism protests activists can remember: 10,000 people, many wearing masks, gathered in central Brussels on Sunday while smaller, physically distanced protests took place in other cities.
The target was King Léopold II, whose brutal rule of Congo from 1885 to 1908 caused an estimated 10 million Congolese deaths through murder, starvation and disease. Brussels city authorities are facing a petition to remove all statutes of the king by 30 June, the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence. Read more HERE.