August 8, 2022

Junta forces stepped up their attacks in Myanmar’s hard-hit Sagaing region in the first week of August, torching nearly 500 homes in 10 villages and causing at least 5,000 people to flee, local sources said. The attacks in Sagaing’s Tabayin and Ayadaw townships included air raids and ground assaults and appeared especially to target large and well-built homes, but houses were burned in every village through which troops passed, one source said. Around 180 out of nearly 200 homes were destroyed on Aug. 4 in Tabayin’s Kaing Kan village alone, one resident told RFA on Saturday, speaking on condition of

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and activists marked the anniversary of the uprising against former Gen. Ne Win on Monday with protests calling for an end to junta rule and a vow to fight until their goal of a federal democracy is achieved. The “People Power Uprising,” also known as the “8888 Uprising,” was a series of nationwide protests, marches, and riots led by university students against the Ne Win regime, key events of which took place on Aug. 8, 1988. Authorities crushed the movement in mid-September that year. On Monday, the NUG observed the anniversary of the uprising

Five southern African countries, with more than half the continent’s elephants, are conducting a first-ever aerial census to determine the elephant population and how to protect it. Light aircraft will fly simultaneously across the plains of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe — in a conservation area known as the Kavango-Zambezi Trans-frontier Conservation Area (KAZA) — in an exercise that will run until October 20. KAZA is home to an estimated 220,000 elephants, and the five countries are keen to know the exact figures and the animals’ distribution patterns. More than 130,000 of the animals are found in Botswana, which

A new philanthropic project hopes to invest $100 million in 10 countries, mostly in Africa, by 2030 to support 200,000 community health workers, who serve as a critical bridge to treatment for people with limited access to medical care. The Skoll Foundation and The Johnson & Johnson Foundation announced Monday that they donated a total of $25 million to the initiative. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which will oversee the project, matched the donations and hopes to raise an additional $50 million. The investment seeks to empower the front-line workers that experts say are essential to