Father Pierre's legacy tainted; fire in Brazil; Africa CDC fighting mpox epidemic

This happened while you were sleeping. Here is what the world agencies recorded from Thursday night to Friday morning.

Father Pierre, a French Catholic cleric who passed away in 2007, founder of the Emaus movement, has been accused of sexual assaults on at least seven women. Two daughters of a woman accusing Abbé Pierre of sexual violence spoke to France Télévisions about the molestation the priest allegedly committed against her in 1989 and 1990. They learned about the entire story in 2019 after their mother’s death, who had testified before a commission on sexual abuse in the Church. In a letter, the woman condemned the sexual exploitation by the priest, which she claimed to have experienced in 1989 and 1990. She had fled from an aggressive husband with no means of livelihood. "Knowing Abbé Pierre personally, she asked him for help," explained one of her daughters. At that time, the 77-year-old priest is said to have asked the woman for something in return. "He quickly moved from charitable help to sexual exploitation," the mother wrote. "He took me to an apartment in Paris, to which he had a key," she recounted in the letter.

The African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) is able to raise 600 million dollars (540 million euros) to fight the growing mpox epidemic (formerly monkeypox) on the continent, said agency head Jean Kaseya. After the new strain of the disease began spreading from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to neighbouring countries, the World Health Organization declared mpox a global health emergency. In August, Africa CDC estimated the cost of fighting the disease to be 245 million dollars (221 million euros). Kaseya did not explain why the costs, which do not include vaccines, had increased. He added that the funds might come from African Union countries, development partners, philanthropists, and the private sector. The international vaccine alliance GAVI has pledged help, and Africa CDC is in talks with The Pandemic Fund, a multilateral organisation financing pandemic response.

A Moldovan soldier stationed at the border with the separatist region of Transnistria has died under unclear circumstances. The Moldovan Ministry of Defence issued a statement saying that the soldier was "fatally wounded...as a result of a shot from the weapon in his possession while performing his duties at his post". An investigation is being conducted. The last such incident occurred in 2022.

On Thursday, unknown armed assailants attacked civilians in the Daykundi province of Afghanistan. Several people died, and others were injured. The spokesperson of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Afghanistan reported the matter. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on their Telegram broadcast channel but provided no evidence to support their claim. This was the first attack in this province since the Taliban took power.

For several days, the ocean has been washing up thousands of containers with medicines, biscuits, and packaged food on the beach of Port Alfred in South Africa, originating from several dozen drifting nearby containers. "If you find medicine containers on the beach in Port Alfred, don’t open them, don’t allow dogs or children near them, and take them to the hospital for safe disposal," city officials warned. These are anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic drugs produced in the USA.

Since August, fires in Brazil have destroyed an area of 21,800 square miles, according to the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in São Paulo, which conducts studies on space and the atmosphere. The burned area is larger than the state of Paraiba. According to INPE, cases of fire in forests and agricultural wastelands in Brazil now account for more than 75 per cent of all fires that broke out in South America in September. INPE also indicated that the fire record was set on 9 September, when 5,000 cases of fire were recorded in forests and meadows across the country. In total, in September this year, nearly 40,000 fires have already broken out in Brazil, more than twice as many as in the same period in 2022.