Severe flooding across West and Central Africa has hit an estimated 4 million people so far this year, many of them children, displacing at least 500,000 people and destroying more than 300,000 homes.

The flooding ranges from Liberia to Nigeria and across Mali, Niger and Chad, with central Africa also affected. In Northeast Nigeria, a burst dam this week has added further to displacement with an estimated 40 per cent of the town of Maiduguri flooded, affecting up to 200,000 people. Other dams in the sub-region are also under pressure with the heavy rainfall, with fears that any similar dam breaks would lead to even greater displacement.

Floods in the region have already damaged at least 61 schools and 13 health centres. Last year’s flooding, which was also severe, had affected 692,000 people in the region by this point in the year, and eventually affected 4.5 million.

In Chad, one of the worst-hit countries, torrential rains have caused flooding throughout the country since late July, with nearly 1.5 million people affected already, 145 deaths and the destruction of 70,000 houses, according to the government. The flooding has also destroyed bridges and roads. Wadi river valleys are full and difficult to cross, adding to the complexity of delivering aid into Sudan’s Darfur region.

16 out of 24 countries in West and Central Africa are among the 30 countries with the biggest climate change risk for children, according to UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index.

The bourgeois government led by the Coalition Party and the True Finns has approved next year's state budget. In it, the government continues its policy of cutting and diminishing the economy, with all working people paying the price.

In September, the government will submit its budget proposal to Parliament, which will approve it at the end of December. Parliament would have a chance to reject the worst of the whiplashes, but that will not happen under right-wing rule.

The draft budget is worth around €88 billion, with a deficit of more than €12 billion. It will be covered by taking on more government debt.

Taxation, direct and indirect, will be increased across the board. The biggest tax increases will come from municipal taxes, with half of the municipalities already raising their taxes.

More money will go to the army, NATO, the police and the shooting ranges - the whole machinery of violence. The rising costs of militarism in recent years will continue next year.

The army will spend €6.5 billion next year, an increase of half a billion on this year. Just two elections ago, the corresponding expenditure was less than 3 billion

The new cost of NATO is almost €100 million. That's an increase of 67 million on this year.

The fire started in a rural area and quickly spread across different fronts, reaching the urban core of Quito.

At least two firefighters have been injured, and more than one hundred families have been evacuated from their homes due to the fires that broke out on Tuesday afternoon in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Authorities do not believe they will be able to extinguish the fires before Wednesday.

In a joint press conference with provincial and national authorities, Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz explained that the shelter system of the San José Patronage has been activated to assist the evacuated families.

The evacuation was carried out as a precaution since, so far, there have been few impacts on homes and infrastructure. No fatalities have been reported.

The fire started in a rural area and quickly spread across different fronts, reaching the urban core of the Ecuadorian capital and extending to the Metropolitan Park. Around 215 members of the Quito Fire Department are battling the flames, Muñoz said, adding that 440 people have been mobilized in various emergency zones.

The National Police have deployed over 1,600 officers, and the Armed Forces have sent around 180 soldiers, while the Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) has ordered two helicopters to join the fire-fighting efforts, although they will not be operational until Wednesday morning.

Between five and seven helicopters will be involved in water-dumping operations over the flames, Muñoz said, urging citizens to avoid driving their vehicles as much as possible to facilitate the movement of emergency services.

Paola Pabon, prefect of the Pichincha province, whose capital is Quito, assured that the local government’s machinery, as well as health, veterinary, and social assistance brigades and units, will be at the service of the Municipality during this emergency. A series of similar fires in Quito in recent days, apparently set deliberately, led to the arrest of two people who were placed in preventive detention.

On Tuesday, the national government suspended the electricity cuts that had been scheduled in Quito as part of the rationing measures introduced last week, due to the severe drought that has hindered the normal operation of the country’s main hydroelectric plants.

During their interventions, the three countries also reiterated the end of coercive and unilateral measures by the United States Government against Latin American nations.

The foreign ministers of Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua denounced on Thursday the foreign interference of the United States in the internal affairs of other countries, Position taken during the 24th Meeting of the Political Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Treaty on Trade of the Peoples (ALBA – TCP).

Cuban Chancellor Bruno Rodriguez said that “the regional oligarchies are resorting to policies apparently banished as coups d’état with the connivance of the US government”.

In that regard, he referred to the coup against Bolivia in 2019 and the latest attempt. He also mentioned the allegations made in this regard by the Governments of Honduras and Colombia.

Rodríguez denounced: “Today we see with concern how one of the founding countries of this alliance is attacked with marked belligerence. Venezuela is once again facing the economic, political and media arsenal of imperialism and right-wing extremism aimed at dynamising its sovereign process of economic, social and cultural development”.

“Our brothers in Nicaragua are equally the target of unjust unilateral measures and fierce interference campaigns by the US government,” he added.

He also mentioned that Cuba is suffering the most brutal, prolonged and intense aggression against its economy and its people, and that the United States Government keeps it on the arbitrary and unilateral list of states which allegedly sponsor terrorism.

Rodríguez also denounced the genocide against the Palestinian people. “We demand a wide, Just and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the basis of the establishment of two states, enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and to have an independent and sovereign state within the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and with the guarantee of return of refugees”.

“Our country supports the General Assembly of the United Nations to take decisive and immediate action and decide once and for all the full membership of the State of Palestine in the UN».

Valdrack Jaentschke: “The worthy, free and sovereign peoples of the world are facing old and new forms of aggression”.

Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, Valdrack Jaentschke, said that the Venezuelan people continues along with President Nicolás Maduro “to face all the aggressions and destabilizations of the imperialists victoriously”.

Jaentschke stated: “Humanity is in critical moments, moments of birth of a new history, of the emergence of a new world order more just, more collective, more solidary and as all birth the emergence of this new world order, multipolar, without hegemonies that are imposed is hard, is difficult, it’s painful”.

He stressed that the world’s worthy, free and sovereign peoples face old and new forms of aggression. “The rifles and gunboats of the past, today reborn in new forms of aggression euphemistically called sanctions, are the same military interventions and the same interferences perpetrated by the Yankee empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”. He also expressed his solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba.

Celinda Sosa: “We must continue on the path of peace”

The Bolivian Foreign Minister, Celinda Sosa, stressed that people face serious challenges in the face of the multiple crises that the world is experiencing today.

Sosa confirmed that the hegemonic powers and imperialism threaten our unity. “We must continue along this path our commitment to the defence of sovereignty and non-intervention in our internal affairs”.

Also condemned the blockade imposed on Cuba by the White House and demanded that it be lifted immediately and likewise excluded from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, “an unfair measure affecting its economy and preventing the full development of Cubans”.

Sosa also demanded an immediate cessation of the coercive measures imposed on Nicaragua and Venezuela, and of the Israeli genocide against the people of Palestine.