الكاتب: kafej

The arrests of the director and editor in chief of Abzas Media come after a series of reports looking into officials’ wealth.

Two journalists have been arrested in Azerbaijan, according to their lawyers, after their media outlet recently published a series of reports looking into the wealth of high-ranking government officials and the family of President Ilham Aliyev.

Sevinj Vagifgyzy, the editor in chief of privately owned Abzas Media, was arrested and her home was searched on Tuesday, her lawyer and Abzas Media said.

A day earlier, police also arrested Ulvi Hasanli, the director of the same media outlet, on charges of “smuggling foreign currency”.

Hasanli pleaded not guilty to the charges, for which he could face 12 years in prison, his lawyer Zibeyda Sadygova said.

Abzas Media reported that Hasanli faced “inhumane treatment” while in custody, including being punched and kicked by officers who asked him about his corruption investigations.

Meanwhile, police also raided the media outlet’s office in Baku and kicked out journalists attempting to document the search from outside, footage from Abvas Media shows.

Abzas Media is one of the few independent media outlets left in Azerbaijan following a near decade-long campaign against independent media and press rights groups, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Stifling dissent

Natalia Nozadze, a South Caucasus researcher with rights group Amnesty International, said Hasanli’s arrest “fits into a pattern of critics being arrested by the authorities to stifle their dissent”.

She said Hasanli “has bravely exposed allegations of high-level corruption in Azerbaijan and covered critical issues of public interest” and that he has in the past “faced repeated harassment from the government”.

Signs of dissent are often met with a tough government response in Azerbaijan, an energy-rich nation long ruled by the Aliyev dynasty.

In July, Azerbaijan arrested high-profile political economist and civil activist Gubad Ibadoghlu on charges of various financial crimes, which he has denied.

He has said his prosecution was retaliation for exposing high-level corruption in Azerbaijan.

Amnesty International has said Ibadoghlu has significant health issues, and his life is in danger “due to unsafe prison conditions and denial of adequate healthcare”.

The government of Aliyev, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 2003 after succeeding from his father Heydar, has long faced international criticism over the country’s poor democratic record.

Lagos, Nigeria – When Yusuf Mogaji joined Nigeria’s federal civil service as a non-teaching staff member at the University of Ilorin in 2015, he had dreams of building his own house. His monthly salary of 46,000 naira (then worth $236) was enough to cater for himself and his family and even buy a half-plot of land (300 square metres) later that year.

Eight years and four civil service appointments later, the land has remained untouched and Mogaji’s aspirations are no longer a priority as he is finding it difficult to feed himself and his family of three.

The value of the naira has plummeted such that even though his net salary has increased to 57,000 naira, the dollar equivalent in 2023 is $68.06 – $167.94 lower than what he earned in 2015. Almost half of the new earnings now go into transporting himself to and from work.

“Is it the money that is not even enough for me to feed that I will use to invest? There was a time when government work was great, but now there is nothing like that again,” Mogaji said.

Since 2015, Nigeria has experienced two recessions and its economy has been ravaged by the vagaries of global oil prices, the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine. In June, the country’s Debt Management Office said the government is servicing debts with at least 73.5 percent of its revenue, making it struggle to meet basic responsibilities.

Inflation is currently at an 18-year high – at 26 percent – in Nigeria as the naira continues to plunge in value against the dollar. The economic realities became grimmer when Bola Tinubu, elected president in February, devalued the naira and removed a decades-long fuel subsidy which had helped lower living costs. Mogaji has cut back on the amount of regular food and household items he purchases, including rice, semolina and even nappies because their prices have tripled.

The Nigeria Labour Congress, a major trade union coalition in the country, has repeatedly threatened to shut down the economy in protest against the government’s refusal to increase workers’ salaries despite the enormous spike in the cost of living. Nigeria’s minimum wage currently stands at 33,000 naira ($39.40).

During the independence speech, the government compromised by opting for an additional 35,000 naira ($41.79) wage award for six months. Al Jazeera spoke with Mogaji and three other workers who said this is barely enough.

“Even the salary is just for food and the remaining to transport yourself to work, there is nothing left. And they [the government] said the palliative is for six months. After the six months, will things go back to the way it was before? We will be back to square one,” he said.

‘A rock and a hard place’

As Nigeria’s economy worsens, an increase in the minimum wage has been the core demand of various workers’ unions. According to experts, salary increases cannot materialise because Africa’s biggest economy is broke and can barely fund its expenditure. Temporary remedies, they add, will barely help beneficiaries.

“There is no other answer than the inflation to be brought down and for inflation to stay down. The honest truth is that for anybody earning in naira, a 26 percent inflation rate ensures you are going nowhere no matter who you are; your monthly salary more or less does not matter,” Joachim MacEbong, a senior analyst at Lagos-based economic insights firm Stears said.

“The money is just not there. Nigeria’s total revenue is five trillion naira and under; you cannot do anything with that amount of money for a country of 200 million people,” he said.

Workers say they are not to blame for the country’s situation amid decades of corruption and wasteful government spending during economic booms.

“Unfortunately, there is a cost to that kind of governance that does not look to avert long-term pain. There is nothing we can do,” Amara Nwankpa, director of public policy initiatives at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation, told Al Jazeera. “We can postpone it one or two more years but at the end of the day, the chickens will still come home to roost and that is the reality – the Nigerian workers are between a rock and a hard place.”

‘Liveable wage’

Since Tinubu announced his raft of economic reforms, many workers, even at the state level, have been clamouring for comprehensive policies to cushion the associated shocks.

Nigeria’s food inflation hit 30.64 percent in September, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. According to SBM Intelligence, a geopolitical advisory based in Lagos, inflation has made even staple foods like jollof rice, a popular food, out of reach. Similarly, electricity tariffs have increased by 40 percent and fuel now costs 700 naira ($0.84) per litre (0.26 gallons). Transport and other amenities are increasingly out of reach for workers, too.

Tunde Taiwo* [name changed for fear of retribution], 31, is a sergeant at Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps, a security agency created by the state government to tackle urban crime. His work often puts him in danger. Last year, he was overpowered and brutalised by louts.

When his 50,000 naira ($59.70) pre-tax October salary came, three loan companies shared in it.

“It is not like I want the loans but when your family is suffering, what will you do? What is the essence of doing a government job when you cannot even feed your family?” Taiwo, who has been working for the government for five years, said. And this is why he is unfazed by temporary increments.

“They should give us a liveable wage that we can depend on, not minimum wage, the way we are living is not up to any standard of living,” he said.

Experts say the government may have missed the window for introducing safety nets as it has squandered years of booms. “The government needs to go for the low-hanging fruit that can target the vulnerable and the most affected in the country like food and other sources of energy that can have immediate impact,” Nwankpa said.

The 41 workers inside a collapsed road tunnel have been seen alive for the first time amid attempts to create new passageways to free them.

The first images of 41 men trapped for 10 days in a highway tunnel in the Indian Himalayas have emerged, showing them standing in a confined space and communicating with rescue workers.

A 30-second video provided by authorities on Tuesday showed about a dozen of the trapped men standing in a semi-circle in front of the endoscopic camera, wearing helmets and construction worker jackets over their clothes against the backdrop of the lights in the tunnel.

The men looked exhausted and anxious, some with thick beards, while a rescue worker outside could be heard telling them to present themselves one by one to confirm their identities on the walkie-talkie gear that had been sent in.

“We will bring you out safely, do not worry,” rescuers can be heard telling the men as they gather near the camera.

The video was shot through a medical endoscopy camera that was pushed through a second, wider pipeline of 15cm (6 inches) in diameter, drilled through the debris on Monday, authorities said.

Before the camera was introduced, rescuers had been communicating with the men inside using radios.

‘Take care of yourselves’

The 41 men have been stuck in the 4.5km (3-mile) tunnel in Uttarakhand state since it caved in early on November 12 and are safe, authorities said, with access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicines.

They have not said what caused the cave-in, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. Efforts to bring out the workers have been slowed by snags in drilling through the debris in the mountainous terrain.

Rescuers are set on Tuesday to resume drilling horizontally through a 60-metre (195-ft) pile of debris to push through a pipe large enough for the trapped men to crawl out.

Drilling had been suspended on Friday after a machine snag and fears of a fresh collapse.

Authorities are simultaneously working on five other plans to pull out the workers, including drilling vertically from the top of the mountain.

Abhishek Sharma, a psychiatrist sent to the site by the state government, said he had asked the 41 men to walk within the 2km (1.2-mile) area where they are confined, do light yoga exercises and talk regularly among themselves to keep occupied.

“Sleep is very important for them … and as of now they have been sleeping well and not reported any difficulties in sleeping,” Sharma told Reuters, adding that the men were in good spirits and keen to emerge soon.

Another doctor at the site, Prem Pokhriyal, said the men had been asked to avoid heavy workouts that could boost the accumulation of carbon dioxide gas in the confined space as they breathe out.

The trapped men are low-wage workers, most of them from poor states in India’s north and east.

“He said he is doing fine,” Sunita Hembrom, the sister-in-law of one of the workers trapped in the tunnel, Surendra Kisko, told reporters after she spoke to him.

“He said, ‘Take care of yourselves, the children and parents. Just tell us what they are doing to get us out of here.’”

Experts have warned about the effects of extensive construction in Uttarakhand, where large parts of the state are prone to landslides.

The planned tunnel is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s infrastructure plans aimed at cutting travel times between some of the most popular Hindu sites in the country, as well as improving access to strategic areas bordering rival China.

Foreign experts have been drafted in, including Australian independent disaster investigator Arnold Dix, president of the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association.

“Those 41 men are coming home,” Dix told the Press Trust of India news agency. “Exactly when? Not sure.”

The gunman’s name, his motive for the attack and other details were not immediately released.

A gunman has opened fire at a Walmart hypermarket in the US state of Ohio, wounding four people before killing himself, according to police.

The incident took place on Monday night in Beavercreek, a city of about 46,000 people.

“A male walked into the Walmart in Beavercreek around 8:35pm Monday [01:35 GMT, Tuesday] and began firing a gun, injuring four people,” Beavercreek police said in a statement posted on social media.

Witnesses told local media the man had opened fire with an assault rifle.

“The victims were transported to area hospitals and their conditions are unknown at this time,” Beavercreek police said. “A fifth person, the shooter, died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Police said no shots were fired by any responding officers, the building was cleared and secured soon after, and no active threat remained.

The gunman’s name, a motive for the attack and other details were not immediately released.

Pictures of the scene showed a phalanx of police cars with their lights flashing converging on the store.

“I was literally just shopping for Thanksgiving stuff and this guy walked right past me with an assault rifle and started shooting,” one woman said in a video posted on social media.

“I ran … He shot like 10 times … I’m so lucky to be alive,” she said.

Another witness on social media described the attacker as a “tall, young white guy” carrying an army bag.

“My nerves are shot right now,” she said.

Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek received three patients, said Catherine Morris, a spokesperson for parent company Kettering Health.

“We’re heartbroken by what’s happened at our Beavercreek, Ohio store. This remains a developing situation, and we’re working closely with investigators on the scene,” a Walmart spokesperson told local media WHIO-TV.

Beavercreek police said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families impacted by this horrific tragedy. We will release more information as it becomes available.”

The South Pacific nation downgrades its alert level, but warns the Ulawun outburst could continue ‘indefinitely’.

A volcanic eruption on a remote island of Papua New Guinea has pushed some residents to begin evacuating and the island’s airport to cancel flights.

Ulawun, the South Pacific nation’s most active volcano, spewed smoke up to 15km (9.3 miles) in the air on Monday afternoon, the country’s Geohazards Management Division said, in its first significant blow-up in years.

The eruption on New Britain island prompted officials to coordinate evacuation plans and cancel fights at the region’s Hoskins airport.

The ash plume continued to rise on Tuesday, reaching at least 5km (3.1 miles), but the country’s geological hazard division downgraded its alert level from Level 4 to Level 3 – indicating a “moderate to strong eruption” rather than a “very strong eruption”.

Still, the volcano remained active and the outburst could continue indefinitely, the division said.

The prospect of the blast triggering a tsunami off the coast of Japan was ruled out on Tuesday, the division said.

The erupting volcano is 47km (29 miles) away from the Papua New Guinean town of Bialla, which is built among oil palm plantations on Ulawun’s slopes.

The division said heavy coatings of black ash were causing leaves to droop in oil palm plantations near the volcano and were accumulating on roofs.

‘Ring of Fire’

Papua New Guinea sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where much of the world’s earthquake and volcanic activities occur.

Ulawun has repeatedly erupted since the 1700s. Its last significant eruption in 2019 forced more than 5,000 people to evacuate.

The division said there were no known casualties from Ulawun’s history of eruptions.

But major effects in terms of population displacement, infrastructure damage and disruption to services were common, the division said.