CAR
As has been mentioned often in Proximities, hunger crises do not get enough coverage in the international media. The Central African Republic is yet another in a long list of countries around the world in which people are suffering food insecurity. The UN World Food Programme now says 42 percent of people there are struggling to access daily food amid a brutal civil war that has been raging on-and-off since 2013.
More from Al Jazeera here.
Turkey-Africa
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to forge deeper ties with African nations at a summit in Istanbul this weekend. Leaders from 16 African nations, along with more than 102 ministers, are attending the meeting at which trade and military cooperation will be among the topics discussed. Erdogan on Sunday pledged to send 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to African countries, calling the relative lack of vaccine stocks on the continent a “global injustice.” Turkey is one of a number of countries - including China, India and Russia - that have sought to strengthen relations with African nations in recent years, as Western influence has waned.
More from France 24 here.
Chile
It’s hard to imagine a starker choice in Chile’s run-off presidential election, which will be held on Sunday. José Antonio Kast, a far-right candidate who professes himself an admirer of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, faces off against Gabriel Boric, a leftist former student leader who, at 35, could become Chile’s youngest president. The race will be tight. Kast won more votes in the first round of the election, but Boric is now leading in the polls. Voter turnout is considered by many to be the key swing factor.
More from the Washington Post here.