Refugee camps are often defined as unplanned settlements which are put up to accommodate persons fleeing their countries or usual habitats in search of a place to seek refuge. They provide the refugees with food, shelter, education and health care.

Africa’s biggest refugee camps have become home to thousands of displaced persons who have turned to them to seek solace, shelter and some semblance of comfort after having been forced to flee their homes due to political strife, conflict, persecutions, economic strain as well as natural disasters.

Africa’s Biggest Refugee Camps

Name Country and Population

1. Dadaab, Kenya (250,000)

2. Kakuma, Kenya (184,550)

3. Hagadera, Kenya (105,998)

4. Dagahaley, Kenya (87,223)

5. Ifo, Kenya (84,089)

6. Yida, South Sudan (70,331)

7. Katumba, Tanzania (66,416)

8. Mishamo, Tanzania (62,000)

9. Pugnido, Ethiopia (62,000)

10. Nyarugusu refugee camp Kigoma, in Tanzania (150,000)

Africa is home to over 25% of refugees in the world. This percentage, however, keeps rising as days go by due to increased civil wars among and in nations. Africa’s biggest refugee camps have been established therefore in a bid to bring solace to those fleeing their countries by providing them with basic amenities such as food, shelter, and clothing, as well as education and health care.

Over the course of a year participants had to fill out a questionnaire about their mobile phone habits, as well as answer questions about their psychological and physical health.  They then completed a series of computerized cognitive tests. Röösli said a unique feature of the study was the use of phone user data from mobile phone operators. That meant for every call made by the participants, the researchers "knew on which network it took place and how long it lasted." 

The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that one year's worth of exposure to mobile phone radiation could have a negative effect on the development of memory performance in specific brain regions in adolescents. Here ‘exposure' almost exclusively refers to phone calls. "80 percent of the absorbed radiation comes from holding the phone to the head," Röösli noted.

Interestingly, they found the brain's memory function was more vulnerable to the negative impact of radiation when the phone was held to the right hand side of the head. That's where the areas of the brain related to memory are located. You can use loudspeaker or headphones if you're worried about radiation effects on your brain. 

...As for other smartphone uses – sending text messages, taking photos, using apps –these involved "almost no [radiation] exposure to the brain."

Therefore, Germany and other European countries should feel free to pursue improved relations with Tehran. “German businesses can continue to invest as much as they want in Iran,” Altmaier said, adding, however, that “many companies depend on loans from banks, most of which refinance themselves in the US – and it creates problems.”

Altmaier’s words come after the Trump administration imposed a second round of sanctions targeting Iran’s purchase of US dollars, despite pleas from some world powers. Earlier this year, Washington slapped Tehran with sanctions aimed at curtailing trade as well as the energy and shipbuilding industries.

These restrictions have damaged EU ties with Iran, which flourished after the milestone 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the US. Last week, the EU responded to the latest Iran sanctions by calling on companies to disregard threats from the US. Apart from the issue of Iran, the US and Europe are locked in a dispute over tariffs on steel, aluminum, and automobiles.

There are at least three good reasons why considering a nuclear option would be foolhardy for Germany. For starters, Germany has repeatedly renounced it, first in 1969 by signing (and later ratifying) the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and then in 1990 by signing the so-called Two Plus Four Treaty, which paved the way for German reunification.

Casting doubt on these commitments would severely damage Germany’s reputation and reliability worldwide. Germany would call into question the credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrence, and thus the alliance itself, along with the entire nuclear non-proliferation regime.

It is worth noting that since its creation in 1949, NATO has been one of the world’s most successful instruments of proliferation prevention. Not a single NATO member state – apart from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France – has found it necessary to acquire nuclear weapons of its own.

Many have been waiting for it to happen for several years, and some people out there are convinced that it is never going to come at all.  Of course the truth is that we are in perhaps the largest stock market bubble that our nation has ever seen, and all other large stock market bubbles have always ended with a major price collapse.  So whether it happens immediately or it takes a little while longer, it is inevitable that stock prices will eventually return to their long-term averages.

Doug Ramsey, the chief investment officer at Leuthold Group, is one of those that is sounding the alarm.  Unlike price to earnings ratios, price to sales ratios are very hard to manipulate, and he has pointed out that price to sales ratios are higher than we have ever witnessed before. As I have said before, stock prices need to fall by 40 or 50 percent just to get into a neighborhood where they will begin to make sense again.

If you take an honest look at the numbers, there is no debate that we are in far worse shape than we were just before the financial crisis of 2008.  Our debt levels are much higher, stock prices are way more inflated, and financial institutions have become even more reckless.  None of the long-term problems that plagued us back in 2008 have been fixed.  Instead, the current system was patched up and all of the bubbles were re-inflated.  Unfortunately, our attention spans are so short these days, and for most people 2008 seems like ancient history at this point.

But without a doubt a much worse crisis than 2008 is on the way, and most people are going to be absolutely blind-sided by it.

Speaking in a panel discussion on Israel’s i24NEWS, Klein reminded viewers about Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, which he argued paved the way for Hamas’s takeover and the use of the coastal enclave to attack Israel. He warned that any future withdrawal from the strategic West Bank, which borders central Israel, would result in a similar security nightmare for the Jewish state. “[Then-Prime Minister] Arial Sharon pledged that if Israel evacuates the Gaza Strip then the world would understand if the Jewish state needed to go in and defend itself,” Klein stated. He continued:

“So, don’t forget that while we see this rocket war aimed at Israeli civilian population centers in part because of the Gaza evacuation, we are now talking about the continued so-called land for peace formula and for some sort of creation ultimately of a Palestinian state in the West bank. In Judea and Samaria. Bordering Israel’s International Airport. Gaza wouldn’t have to aim at Ben Gurion Airport. From the West Bank, you can very easily lob a very short range Qassam rocket or less at Ben Gurion.”

“So, let’s keep in mind the disaster, the war that Israel is facing right now in Gaza when we continue to talk about the so-called peace process even though there doesn’t seem to be a peace partner not just in Gaza but in the West Bank with Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah. Any way you look at it, there is no Palestinian leadership that can take over any strategic territory, whether evacuated or in a so-called peace deal.”

Citing sources from inside Facebook, The New York Times reported on the process that led to Jones’ suspension. “The situation was volatile enough that Mr Zuckerberg got personally engaged, according to two people involved in Facebook’s handling of the accounts.”

The rest of the Times’ article is a flurry of contradictions. It simultaneously calls fears of censorship “overblown” while acknowledging that users of the platforms must now “tip-toe around” controversial topics to avoid being banned. At the same time, the piece grudgingly admits that “both fans and critics of Infowars can probably agree that a system in which one executive can decide to shut off a news organization’s access to a large portion of its audience is hardly ideal.”

Markets reacted negatively and the currency, the rand, has continued to plummet over the last week.  This is because the plan has invited comparisons with the chaotic land reform programme across the Limpopo River in neighbouring Zimbabwe, which saw scenes of violent evictions of mainly white farmers.

A man wearing a T-shirt of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party said that his Afrikaner people had been farming in the Western Cape for the past 300 years.  "When my forefathers came, they found no-one but the Khoi and the San. My people got what they have in this country not by theft, not by genocide, but by fair means."  Some land owners threatened war to defend their farms and their opponents vowed to respond in kind.