26 March 2017 – Six aid workers from a national non-governmental organization were killed when their convoy was ambushed yesterday while travelling along the Government-controlled area on the Juba-Pibor road, the United Nations mission in the country (UNMISS) has said.

Their bodies were found on the road by others members of the convoy who were some way behind.

&#8220The United Nations condemns this appalling and pointless loss of life,&#8221 said the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for South Sudan and the head of UNMISS, David Shearer in a news release issued by the mission.

&#8220This cold-blooded killing is utterly reprehensible, not least, because these aid workers were dedicated to alleviating the ongoing suffering of the people of South Sudan,&#8221 he added, urging the Government to investigate and apprehend the killers.

The attack &#8211 the single worst incident targeting aid workers in the African country since the outbreak of hostilities in December 2013 &#8211 comes at a time when humanitarian needs have reached unprecedented levels.

&#8220[Such attacks] not only put the lives of aid workers at risk, they also threaten the lives of thousands of South Sudanese who rely on our assistance for their survival,&#8221 said Eugene Owusu, the Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, stressing that security of relief workers has to be ensured so that they are able to provide relief to the those with immense needs across the nation.

The conflict has taken a devastating tool on the people of South Sudan: around 7.5 million people are in need of relief and protection, and the humanitarian crisis has deepened further with localized famine declared in parts of the country.

No safety when attacks met with silence

At least 79 aid workers have been killed in South Sudan since December 2013, including at least 12 this year. The last two months alone have seen a sharp increase of attacks on humanitarians and looting of supplies intended for people suffering from the famine.

On 14 March, one health worker and a patient were killed in an attack on a humanitarian convoy that was responding to a cholera outbreak in Yirol East (in the central part of South Sudan). Earlier, on 10 March, staff of an international non-governmental organization were detained by non-state armed individuals during fighting in Mayendit town (also in central South Sudan). They were released four days later.

&#8220Every time an attack of this nature happens, we say that it must never happen again. And yet it does […] there is no safety when attacks are met with silence and inaction,&#8221 said the Humanitarian Coordinator, underscoring that the impunity that has prevailed for such crimes must end, and that perpetrators must be brought to justice.

&#8220I implore all those in positions of power to step up to their responsibilities and stop this, as they are ultimately accountable for what happens under their watch.&#8221

Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Sunday won the election of the fifth-term chief executive of China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The Electoral Affairs Commission of the Hong Kong SAR declared that Lam garnered 777 of 1,163 valid votes.

China’s air quality worsened year on year in the first two months of 2017 mainly due to unfavorable weather conditions and a warming economy, official data showed.

In the first two months, 338 major cities around China enjoyed good air quality on 64.6 percent of days, down 4.8 percentage points from a year earlier, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said in a statement.

The average density of fine particulate matter PM2.5 in those cities rose 12.7 percent to 71 micrograms per cubic meter.

In the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the share of days with good air quality was down by 19 percentage points to 44.7 percent in the same period, and PM2.5 density surged 48 percent from a year ago, MEP said.

The share of good air days for Beijing plunged 22.5 percentage points to 54.2 percent.

The city of Haikou in southern China’s Hainan Province had the cleanest air out of the nation’s 74 major cities, while Hebei’s capital city Shijiazhuang was the worst polluted.

Chai Fahe, expert with the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, attributed the deterioration partly to unfavorable meteorological conditions for pollutants to disperse, including lighter wind and higher humidity in some regions.

The warming economy also weighed on air quality, Chai said.

With recovering production and demand since the latter half of last year, both output and pollutant emissions from high-polluting sectors were on the rise, he said.

China is heading in the right direction for tackling air pollution, head of MEP Chen Jining said earlier this month.

In the past three years, days of good air quality increased in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, Chen said.

However, the campaign against air pollution cannot be completed in a short period of two or three years, but will need a relatively long time, he added.

“We will make our skies blue again,” according to this year’s government work report.

In 2017, China will cut the emissions of both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by 3 percent, and reduce PM2.5 density in key areas markedly, the report said.

Commenting on Douglas Carswell’s decision to leave UKIP,
Labour’s Shadow Minister and Elections Chair, Andrew Gwynne MP, said:

“UKIP are tearing themselves apart. Their ‎only MP has quit, their biggest donor has fled and their leader
was utterly rejected by the voters of Stoke-on-Trent a few weeks ago. Under Paul Nuttall UKIP now has no MPs and no
future.

“This episode exposes the truth of UKIP: they’ve got nothing to
offer the voters and they’re a divided party with extreme policies, such as
privatising the NHS.”