BAMAKO (Dispatches) – Eight soldiers and 57 militants were killed in clashes at a base in northern Mali where rival militant groups, including the Daesh, are active, the Malian army said on Saturday. The Malian army said it carried out the attack against the militant base after its troops had been attacked by “unidentified armed men” in the Archam region in the conflict-plagued north, near the border with restive Burkina Faso and Niger. Eight soldiers died and 57 armed militants were “neutralized” in the ensuing “violent clashes,” the army said. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are struggling to contain armed militants linked to Al-Qaeda and Daesh that control swathes of territory in the porous border area of the West African Sahel that is larger than the size of Germany. The blow to the terrorists comes as Mali on Friday asked France to withdraw troops from its territory “without delay”, calling into question Paris’ plan for a four- to six-month departure. Mali has also asked the smaller European Takuba group of Special Forces, which was created in 2020, to rapidly depart from the impoverished country. President Emmanuel Macron responded with a statement claiming that he would not compromise the safety of French soldiers and the withdrawal will take place “in orderly fashion.” Paris had declared on Thursday that it would withdraw thousands of troops from Mali due to a breakdown in relations with the country, a decade after launching a war without the initial approval of the United Nations or the French parliament.

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LONDON (The Independent/Xinhua) – More than 3.7 million American children re-entered poverty after the expiration of monthly payments through a pandemic-era federal program that expired at the end of 2021. The nation’s child poverty rate rose from 12 percent at the end of 2021 to 17 percent last month, effectively erasing the gains from an expanded Child Tax Credit program introduced by President Joe Biden, according to a report from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. The centre found that an additional 3.7 million children are now living in poverty relative to the end of December, with Black and Latino children making up the largest increases, at 5.9 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively. Last March, Congressional Democrats approved an extension of the Child Tax Credit from July through December, boosting monthly payments of $250 to families with children aged 6 to 17 and $300 for families with children under 6. More than 61 million children in roughly 36 million households received payments through December, making dramatic cuts to the nation’s childhood poverty rate, food insecurity and childhood hunger, according to federal data. Meanwhile, according to two new studies published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday, American children’s mental health crisis has gotten worse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both studies examined pediatric emergency department (ED) visits data from 2019 through January 2022. One study showed COVID-19-related ED visits increased across all pandemic years and among pediatric age groups, Xinhua news agency reported. There were also increases in the weekly number and proportion of ED visits for certain types of injuries, some chronic diseases, and visits related to behavioral health concerns, especially among children aged from 5 to 17.

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GENEVA (Anadolu) – The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) says that the world is not prepared for a new pandemic that could follow the coronavirus and reiterated his view that the narrative that the crisis is over is false. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus remarks were made in an address to the three-day Munich Security Conference in Berlin. “We have been saying the world has not been prepared for a long time,” said Tedros. “And it was caught by surprise due to this pandemic. I don’t see that the world is prepared. And I worry because the investment we expect is not happening.” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who was also at the conference, said he does not think the world can reach the goal of 70% vaccination in 2022. “It’s too late, too late,” said Gates. “There are a lot of diseases out there,” he said. “We live in a very inequitable world.” “I think a disease like this reminds people how inequitable global health is every single day,” he added.

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TUNIS (MEMO/MEE) – Tunisian President Kais Saied has extended the state of emergency in the country until 31 December, 2022. This came according to a decision published by the Official Gazette of the Republic of Tunisia in its issue released on Friday. Saied initially extended the state of emergency for six months from 26 December, 2020, to 23 June, 2021. On 24 June, the president extended the state of emergency until 23 July. On 24 July, Saied extended the state of emergency in the country for another six months, until 19 January, before deciding to extend it until the end of 2022. The state of emergency grants the Ministry of Interior exceptional powers, including banning meetings, introducing curfews, inspecting shops, monitoring the press, publications, radio broadcasts and film and theatre screenings. These powers may be applied without prior permission from the judiciary – a matter that faces increasing international and domestic criticism. Meanwhile, a military court sentenced Tunisian MP Yassin Ayari in absentia to 10 months in prison for insulting the president and the army after describing Saied’s move to freeze parliament in July as a “foreign-backed military coup”. Ayari, who had made the comments on a Facebook post, told Reuters from Paris that Saied was criminalizing free speech in Tunisia following Friday’s sentencing him. “It’s ridiculous. ... Yesterday Saied said in Brussels that he is not a dictator, and today a military court issues a prison sentence against freedom of expression to a lawmaker,” said Ayari.

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CORFU, Greece (AFP) – Rescuers picked up the search for 12 missing people at the break of dawn on Saturday with the Italian-flagged ferry still burning on the Ionian Sea off Corfu. Overnight, patrol ships combed the area off the holiday island hoping to locate survivors, the Greek coastguard told AFP. The fire and the heat on the ferry prevented rescuers from boarding on Saturday morning, but a helicopter, a frigate, a fire-fighting vessel and six tug boats were operating in the area more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Corfu. Rescuers brought 280 passengers to Corfu after the blaze on the Euroferry Olympia broke out en route from Greece to Italy. Officials say the cause of the fire remains unknown. The coastguard said all of the missing are truck drivers -- seven from Bulgaria, three from Greece, one from Turkey and one from Lithuania. Truckers who were rescued from the vessel told Greece’s public broadcaster on Saturday that some drivers preferred to sleep in their vehicles because the ship’s cabins were over-crowded.