A paralysed man has regained the ability to walk smoothly using only his thoughts for the first time, researchers said on Wednesday, thanks to two implants that restored communication between brain and spinal cord.. Last year the team showed that a spinal cord implant -- which sends electrical pulses to stimulate movement in leg muscles -- had allowed three paralysed patients to walk again.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called on nations to ramp up funding to the Horn of Africa, which is suffering its worst drought in generations.. Somalia and its neighbors in the Horn of Africa including Ethiopia and Kenya have been suffering the worst drought in four decades after five failed rainy seasons that have left millions of people in need and decimated crops and livestock.
A senior Greek judge, Ioannis Sarmas, was asked Wednesday to lead an interim government tasked with organising a second national election by late June, the presidency announced.. Faced with "the imposibility of forming a government" just three days after national elections "the solution, according to the Constitution is the formation of an interim government," said President Katerina Sakellaropoulou during a meeting with Sarmas.
The world's biggest warship, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, arrived in Oslo on Wednesday for a stopover criticised by neighbouring Russia as an "illogical and harmful" show of force.. "Considering that Oslo admits that Russia poses no direct military threat to Norway, such shows of force seem illogical and harmful," he added.
More than a million Somalis have been displaced within their own country in just over four months through a "toxic" mix of drought, conflict and floods, humanitarian agencies said Wednesday.. Around 433,000 people were forced from their homes between January 1 and May 10 as a grinding Islamist insurgency raged and clashes broke out in the breakaway Somaliland region, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said. in addition, "over 408,000 people were displaced by floods sweeping across their villages and another 312,000 people were displaced by ravaging drought," they said in a joint statement.
Fighting had eased but not stopped in Sudan on Wednesday, the second full day of a ceasefire that has raised cautious hopes among beleaguered civilians that aid corridors and escape routes will open soon.. - 'Trajectory of collapse' - Hopes for quick relief from the fighting and suffering were dimmed by the fact that a series of earlier ceasefires were all quickly broken, with both sides trading blame for the violations.
A Swiss court on Wednesday acquitted Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan on charges of rape and sexual coercion, finding no evidence against the former Oxford University professor.. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford until November 2017 and held visiting roles at universities in Qatar and Morocco.
Ignacio Martinez never imagined becoming mayor, but when he saw the struggles of his mountain village in northeastern Spain, he and his friends decided to run for office in the 2015 elections.. "Many villages are on the verge of demographic collapse, a level of abandonment from which there’s no return," he told AFP, saying running for office "just felt like the right thing to do."
France is to try 19 men over a people-smuggling plot that led to the 2019 deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in the back of a lorry, a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday.. A British judge in 2021 convicted two men on 39 counts of manslaughter over the lorry tragedy, jailing them for 27 and 20 years.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson has condemned the handling of fresh allegations of Covid lockdown rule-breaking as "bizarre and unacceptable", as he faces a further possible probe into the "Partygate" scandal that helped push him from office.. Johnson, 58, was ousted as prime minister last summer following a revolt within his ruling party after months of accusations of lockdown infringements and other scandals.
