Graphic footage showing officers from Nigeria’s “Sars” police unit dragging two men from a hotel in Lagos and shooting one of them in the street has sparked mass fury across the country and fuelled long-held demands for reform. In the disturbing footage taken by visitors at a hotel and posted on to social media on Saturday, armed officers of the Federal Special Anti Robbery Squad, commonly called SARS, can be seen dragging two limp bodies from the hotel compound into the street before one of the men is shot. The video has sparked a deluge of footage and stories posted on to social media alleging recent atrocities and brutality by the notorious Sars unit, long accused of rampant abuses. The unit, spread around the country, often operates in plainclothes, brandishing heavy weapons and setting up roadblocks for indiscriminate searches, fuelling widespread anger that they are often indistinguishable from armed criminals. In one of videos posted on Twitter, onlookers accuse a squad of Sars ...

School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe. Friday’s strikes – some in the form of mostly socially distanced physical marches on the streets, and some purely online meetings – were on a smaller scale and far more subdued than last year’s September week of action, in which at least 6 million people around the world were estimated to have taken part. Greta Thunberg led a strike in Sweden, which was limited to 50 people by the country’s lockdown laws – “so we adapt”, she tweeted, with a picture showing strikers more than 2 metres apart. The ...