A Spanish rapper has barricaded himself inside a Catalan university to avoid a prison sentence for tweets and lyrics that attacked the monarchy and police.

Pablo Hasel was given until last Friday to turn himself in, after being sentenced to nine months for glorifying terrorism, and slandering the crown and state institutions.

But he has tweeted that he is with supporters inside Lleida University.

“They’ll have to break in to take me and jail me,” he tweeted defiantly.

Besides attacks on the monarchy, the musician’s tweets and lyrics accused police of torturing and killing demonstrators and migrants.

Lleida University is in the city of Lérida (Lleida in Catalan), 150km (90 miles) west of Barcelona. He is with about 20 supporters there.

More than 200 artists, including film director Pedro Almodóvar and Hollywood star Javier Bardem, have signed a petition against his jailing.

The Spanish government plans to reduce the penalty for “crimes of expression” such as the glorification of terrorism, hate speech and insults to the crown and religion, in cases that involve artistic or cultural activities.

In one message Hasel expressed support for Victoria Gómez, a jailed member of the banned Marxist group Grapo. Elsewhere he accused King Felipe VI and his father Juan Carlos, the former king, of several crimes.

Hasel’s real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duro. He also backs the campaign for Catalan independence.

In 2017, Catalan separatists triggered Spain’s biggest political crisis since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. Sunday’s Catalan election gave the separatists a majority in the regional parliament.

In 2018 another rapper, known as Valtònyc, was jailed for three-and-a-half-years in Spain, but he fled to Belgium, where a court decided not to extradite him. He remains wanted under a Spanish arrest warrant.

If the court order against Pablo Hasel is finally enforced, he will become the highest-profile person to have actually gone to prison for a speech crime in Spain in recent years. But his case is only one of many that have caused controversy.

Several other performers and bloggers have fallen foul of the criminal offence of “glorifying terrorism”, which is framed so broadly that any example of justifying a terrorist act, even if it took place a long time ago, can lead to a conviction.

In 2018 the rapper Valtònyc had his jail term confirmed by Spain’s Supreme Court, for glorifying terrorism and insulting the monarchy with his promises of bullets for right-wing politicians and a noose for the king.

The year before, Twitter user Cassandra Vera had been sentenced to prison for merely making jokes about the 1973 assassination of Gen Franco’s number two, Adm Luis Carrero Blanco, in a bomb attack by Eta Basque militants, although she was acquitted on appeal.

The government has promised to review the law. The legal framing of speech crimes might seem a dry, academic subject, but an explosion of graffiti artwork in Spanish cities in defence of Hasel in recent days suggests that many among Spain’s youth believe there is a real issue of freedom at stake.

Guinea has officially declared that it is dealing with an Ebola epidemic after the deaths of at least three people from the virus.

They – and four others – fell ill with diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding after attending the burial of a nurse.

Newly developed vaccines will be acquired through the World Health Organization (WHO), officials said.

Between 2013 and 2016 more than 11,000 people died in the West Africa Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea.

In response to that epidemic, which mainly affected Guinea and its neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone, several vaccines were trialled, which have since been successfully used to fight outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The WHO is on full alert and is in contact with the manufacturer [of a vaccine] to ensure the necessary doses are made available as quickly as possible to help fight back,” the AFP news agency quotes Alfred George Ki-Zerbo, the WHO representative in Guinea, as saying.

An Ebola vaccine was first trialled over four months in 2015 in Guinea – and drugs that can increase the survival rate of patients have also been developed in recent years.

How did this outbreak start?

A nurse who worked a health centre in Goueké, near the south-eastern city of Nzérékoré, died on 28 January and her funeral was held four days later.

Community funerals, where people help wash the body of the person who has died, can be a key way of spreading Ebola in the earlier stages of an outbreak.

The bodies of victims are particularly toxic. The incubation period can last from two days to three weeks.

Ebola jumps to humans from infected animals, such as chimpanzees, fruit bats and forest antelope. Bushmeat – non-domesticated forest animals hunted for human consumption – is thought to be the natural reservoir of the Ebola virus.

It then spreads between humans by direct contact with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or indirectly through contact with contaminated environments.

All those infected at the funeral of the nurse were over the age of 25, health officials say.

Following a crisis meeting on Sunday, the health ministry said all cases had been isolated, contact tracing was ongoing and a treatment centre was to be set up in Goueké.

How have Guinea’s neighbours reacted?

This new outbreak is in roughly the same area where the epidemic began in December 2013.

Given the cross border trade between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and their relatively weak healthcare systems, there is concern the outbreak could spread.

Liberia’s President George Weah has put the health authorities on heightened alert.

The BBC’s Umaru Fofana in Sierra Leone says there is far more fear of Ebola in the country than Covid-19.

He says the existence of new vaccines do provide some sense of relief – there is a global emergency stockpile of 500,000, made available through Gavi, the international vaccine alliance.

The three countries have a joint population of 22.5 million, prompting concerns that manufacturers would have little time to produce more if needed at a time when Covid vaccines are their preoccupation, our reporter says.

Experts say containment is key to fighting the disease. During the 2015 trial in Guinea – 100 patients were identified and then close contacts were either vaccinated immediately, or three weeks later. In the 2,014 close contacts who were vaccinated immediately there were no subsequent cases of Ebola.

What is Ebola?

• Ebola is a virus that initially causes sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat

• It progresses to vomiting, diarrhoea and both internal and external bleeding

• People are infected when they have direct contact through broken skin, or the mouth and nose, with the blood, vomit, faeces or bodily fluids of someone with Ebola

• Patients tend to die from dehydration and multiple organ failure

Fifteen people in South Africa are facing fraud charges relating to the funeral of the former president, Nelson Mandela, in 2013.

They include prominent members of the ruling African National Congress in the Eastern Cape province. They have not commented on the allegations.

Prosecutors accuse them of corruption and money-laundering amounting to nearly $700,000 (£500,000).

Mandela was the country’s first black leader after apartheid ended in 1994.

The allegations first emerged in 2014, months after Mandela’s funeral in Qunu, Eastern Cape, in December 2013, which was attended by heads of state from around the world.

Those facing charges include the health minister of Eastern Cape province, Sindiswa Gomba, a number of business figures, and other lawmakers from the governing ANC.

Among them are regional chair Pumlani Mkolo, former Buffalo City metro mayor Zukiswa Ncitha and council speaker Luleka Simon-Ndzele.

Prosecutors allege they made fraudulent claims for the transportation of mourners and venues used in the city of East London for memorial services.

They were granted bail and are expected to appear on 5 March.

“This matter is coming back to the roll after it was withdrawn in 2019 in order for the investigation to tighten up the loose ends and add more charges,” Sipho Ngwema, the national spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority, was quoted as saying by news site EWN.

Pigs can play video games, scientists have found, after putting four fun-loving swine to the test.

Four pigs – Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory – were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls.

Researchers said the fact that the pigs understood the connection between the stick and the game “is no small feat”.

And the pigs even continued playing when the food reward dispenser broke – apparently for the social contact.

Usually, the pigs would be given a food pellet for “winning” the game level. But during testing, it broke – and they kept clearing the game levels when encouraged by some of the researchers’ kind words.

“This sort of study is important because, as with any sentient beings, how we interact with pigs and what we do to them impacts and matters to them,” lead author Dr Candace Croney said.

The research team also thought that the fact the pigs could play video games at all – since they are far-sighted animals with no hands or thumbs – was “remarkable”.

But it was not easy for them.

Out of the two Yorkshire pigs, Hamlet, was better at the game than Omelette, but both struggled when it got harder – hitting the single target just under half the time.

The Panepinto micro pigs had a bigger gamer skill gap – while Ivory was able to hit one-wall targets 76% of the time, Ebony could only do it 34% of the time.

But the researchers were still satisfied that the attempts were deliberate and focused, rather than random – what they called “above chance”.

That means that “to some extent, all acquired the association between the joystick and cursor movement”.

Kate Daniels, from Willow Farm in Worcestershire, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that while the scientists might have been impressed, “I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone that works with pigs”.

She added: “They’re not playing Minecraft – but that they can manipulate a situation to get a reward is no surprise at all.”

She paraphrased a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill: “Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you, and pigs look you right in the eye.”

She added: “When you look a pig right in the eye, you can tell there’s intelligence there.”

Still, pigs are no match for humans when playing games – or even less intelligent primates.

The same kind of experiment has been tried with chimpanzees and monkeys, who have the advantage of opposable thumbs, and were able to meet much higher requirements from researchers.

Naijapremiumgist.com