Learning under trees

People have to live with leaves falling from their neighbor's trees, a German court has ruled. But tree owners do have to stick to some regulations.

Elizabeth Wathuti, the 23-year-old climate activist planting trees in Kenya

80 percent of Boko Haram fighters are from Borno State

Cameroon is losing forest at a dramatic pace – with ebony trees fast disappearing. Now a Cameroon sawmill has partnered with US instrument maker Taylor Guitars, which favors the high-quality wood, to replant ebony trees.

The Borno state government has revived the monthly environmental sanitation exercise since it was last observed twenty-six years ago. The government believes this will help keep the streets clean even as the state gradually recover from the recent insurgent attack.

The closure of borders by President Muhammadu Buhari has encouraged and stimulated the production of local rice production in Borno state.

Unknown perpetrators made off with 80 Christmas trees being stored in an empty department store over the weekend. Police estimate that the trees were worth over €1,000.

Lagos state house of assembly has condemned the incessant harassment of coconut sellers in Badagry and the seizure of locally sourced coconut products by customs officers.

For most outsiders, Los Angeles is all about Hollywood, palm trees and sunny skies. But the huge metropolis that is home to nearly four million people is also the largest urban oil field in the country. Hundreds of active oil wells sit in densely populated and mostly low-income neighbourhoods of the county, butting up against schools, homes, parks, shopping malls or cemeteries.

In Bandia, there used to be a forest of baobab trees, but all that remains is a lunar landscape of abandoned craters. In Senegal, Plans to extend a cement plant that has been exploiting the subsoil for 20 years are causing local populations to fear even greater desolation.

Volunteers from Berlin are helping the city's drought-stricken trees by arranging to water them regularly. Lukas Jülich and Sebastian Haße roam the German capital's streets armed with watering cans to take care of the trees, which since 2018 have been under threat from a lack of rainfall.

Boko Haram has admitted to killing scores of rice farmers in northern Nigeria. The terror group said the attacks were carried out in for farmers cooperating with the Nigerian military.