MEXICO: The Environment Department will send 101 firefighters to help fight wildfires in California.

The five times of 20 firefighters will first be deployed to California’s Sequoia National Park. Authorities said they can spare the crews because there are not many wildfires in Mexico in this season.

SUDAN: The International Monetary Fund has signed off on economic reforms proposed by the transitional government.
The reforms involve eliminating food and fuel subsidies and echo those which prompted a massive uprising against long-term tyrant

Omar Bashir, who was removed by the military in 2019 amid mass protests.

The IMF said the programme would mark the “difficult transition to a well-functioning market-based economy.”

GERMANY: Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is to face new charges of market manipulation, the Braunschweig state court said yesterday.

Mr Winterkorn is already charged over a diesel emissions scandal that exposed the company using software that recognised when vehicles were on test stands and turned emission controls on, then turned them off again. The vehicles were thus able to escape US legal limits on nitrogen oxide emissions.

SOUTH AFRICA: Residents of the Kommetjie seaside village have launched a campaign for the return of a baboon called Kataza, exiled for his raids on homes.

Police in the greater Cape Town area have “rap sheets” listing the misdemeanours of the city’s many baboons and Kataza was sent to live in Tokai after organising his troop to launch 15 house raids in July and August. Police records say he “solicited other individuals to join him in raiding town.”

But activist Jenni Trethowan said: “Baboons are [being] criminalised for things that baboons do normally.”