TOP NEWS

Political situation in the UK
Badenoch: I do not identify as Nigerian

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, no longer sees herself as Nigerian. She states this in the podcast Rosebud, according to the BBC.

Badenoch was born in the UK, but grew up in Nigeria and the US. She also states that she has not renewed her Nigerian passport since the early 2000s.

– I do not identify with it anymore. Most of my life has been in the UK and I have never felt that I have needed it, she says of the passport.

Political situation in Mali
Former Prime Minister charged after X post about prisoners

Mali's former prime minister has been arrested, accused of undermining the state in a post on X. The BBC reports.

Moussa Mara is said to have written, among other things, “as long as there is night, the sun will inevitably rise” on the microblog in connection with a visit to what he describes as political prisoners in the country.

Mara is also charged with “opposing legitimate authority” and “inciting public disorder”.

Moussa Mara denies all charges, his lawyer told AFP.

Coronavirus Infection in Europe
von der Leyen’s text message to pharmaceutical chief is “gone”

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has likely deleted messages requested by journalists, the New York Times reports. The messages were sent to pharmaceutical company Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in 2021 when the Commission was negotiating to buy Pfizer’s Covid vaccine during the pandemic.

The messages have been requested by several journalists, including reporters at the New York Times. After a long process, the Commission announced this week that the messages had not been found. This means that they had either been deleted or lost.

In a letter to the newspaper, the Commission writes that von der Leyen's chief of staff Björn Seibert read through the messages in 2021 and came to the conclusion that they were not official documents. This is because they only contained logistical questions about when von der Leyen and Bourla would be heard by phone.