World Tour: Ghana celebrates a new president

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Oduah.

SOUND: [CHEERING CROWDS]

ONIZE ODUAH: Ghana election — We begin today on the streets of Ghana’s capital, Accra.

Crowds cheered after a former president won a Saturday vote.

John Mahama served as president from 2012 to 2017. His weekend victory follows two failed attempts to return to the top office.

Current Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia ran as the ruling party’s candidate and conceded before the election agency officially announced a winner.

The country’s economic crisis dominated the polls with voters blaming the ruling party for the struggles. Many young people are unemployed, and the prices of goods have skyrocketed.

Akasi Danso joined other supporters of Mahama on the streets.

AKASI DANSO: Today, if I'm happy, I'm happy that God almighty has listened to our prayer and chose the one that Ghanaians need to be the next president of the Republic of Ghana. So Ghanaians are happy.

Mahama will be sworn in on Jan. 7.

Romania election — We head now to Romania, where a last-minute court ruling scrapped a presidential run-off vote.

Romanians went to the polls for a first round of voting last month. Centrist candidate Elena Lasconi and far-right independent Călin Georgescu came out on top and were set to face each other last Sunday in a second vote.

But the Constitutional Court moved to annul the first round of votes over reports of Russian interference.

Declassified intelligence documents claim nearly 800 TikTok accounts created by a foreign state  were activated shortly before the vote to support the little-known Georgescu.

Georgescu rejected the ruling as an attempt to keep him from power.

CĂLIN GEORGESCU: Basically, by cancelling democracy, our very freedom is cancelled.

He says the country has canceled democracy by canceling the vote.

But Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called the issue a matter of national security.

KLAUS IOHANNIS:[ROMANIAN] I remain in office until a new president of Romania is elected. When the new president is sworn in, I will leave.

He says he will remain in office until a new president is sworn in.

SOUND: [DRUG BUST]

Dominican Republic drug bust — Next, to the Dominican Republic … where authorities say they have made the largest-ever cocaine bust in the Caribbean nation.

Officials discovered more than nine tons of cocaine hidden in two containers of banana shipments that left Guatemala and were heading for Belgium.

320 bags of drugs spread throughout the shipment arrived at the Caucedo port in the capital of Santo Domingo…with an estimated street value of $250 million dollars. Carlos Deveres is the spokesman of the country’s National Drug Control Directorate.

CARLOS DEVERES: [SPANISH] The Public Prosecutor's Office and the DNCD are investigating at least ten people linked to the port, while they investigate the frustrated shipment to Europe.

He says the public prosecutor is investigating at least 10 people connected to the port.

The drug stash is three times the size of the country’s previous record when authorities uncovered more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine at the same port in 2006.

Monitoring agencies have said the Caribbean is becoming a major trafficking route again for drugs entering the European market.

SOUND: [LEADING LIGHTS]

Nobel lights — We close today in Stockholm, Sweden, with a tribute to the 66 women who have won the Nobel Prize since its inception in 1901. One of the honorees is Marie Skłodowska-Curie who won the award twice, once for physics and then again for chemistry.

The “Leading Lights” presentation includes colorful light displays, glowing art installations, and animated vignettes projected onto local buildings.

Alexis Turchet is the show’s artistic director.

ALEXIS TURCHET: To create this show, we worked with around 12 different artists who come from different artistic backgrounds. We worked also with the Nobel prize museum, who have helped us a lot with research and what we could use actually during this show to talk about.

The show wrapped up with the Nobel award ceremony Tuesday.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

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