Luanda, Angola | AFP | Angola has rejected conditions demanded by an EU election observer mission that had been preparing to witness next month’s polls in the country, state media reported Monday. The European team had called for unfettered access to polling stations across the vast southern African nation during the …
Read More »Malala meets her Chibok ‘heroes’ in Nigeria
Abuja, Nigeria | AFP | Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai on Monday called for a “state of emergency for education” in Nigeria, as she visited the country and met some of the Chibok schoolgirls whose cause she championed. The 20-year-old global education campaigner made the suggestion at a meeting …
Read More »BOOK: Mandela ambulance ‘caught fire’, his surgeon reveals
Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | An ambulance carrying South Africa’s first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela caught fire as it was rushing him to hospital, his doctor revealed in a book published on Monday. The incident is one of several bizarre episodes contained in the book chronicling Mandela’s final …
Read More »Tribal militia kidnap two Catholic priests in DR Congo
Goma, DR Congo | AFP | Tribal militia forces have kidnapped two Roman Catholic priests in the troubled North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Monday. Kidnappings are frequent in this eastern part of the DRC, related to communal conflict between the Nande and Hunde tribes …
Read More »Uber driver dies after car torched in South Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | A South African Uber driver whose car was torched five weeks ago died of his injuries on Monday, the company said, after an attack allegedly involving rival metre-taxi drivers. The man was parked on a street in the capital Pretoria at night when …
Read More »Congo votes for parliament with opposition calling foul
Brazzaville, Congo | AFP | Voters went to the polls in legislative elections in the oil-rich Republic of Congo on Sunday, the first since a violence-marred presidential poll last year which returned Denis Sassou Nguesso to power. The first round of polling to elect National Assembly members as well as local …
Read More »Kenya’s social media election: attack ads and data mining
Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | A strikingly toxic campaign ad was unleashed online in Kenya just weeks before national elections — a potentially explosive move in a country where politics and ethnicity are closely aligned. The 90-second video, shot in moody monochrome, presented a dystopia in which Raila Odinga, the leading …
Read More »Israel PM, president in rare Kagame honour
Netanyahu, Rivlin hold rare joint greeting for Rwandan president in Jerusalem |Greer Fay Cashman| He didn’t do it when U.S. President Donald Trump met with President Reuven Rivlin in June; nor did he do it when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with President Rivlin in early July. But when …
Read More »Seized US journalist in DR Congo found safe
Bunia, DR Congo | AFP | A US journalist kidnapped last week by a militia group in DR Congo was found safe early Sunday, officials said, as another source said five people had been killed in clashes. Lisa Dupuy and 11 wardens working for the Okapi Wildlife Reserve (RFO) — …
Read More »Opposition cries foul as Congo votes for parliament
Brazzaville, Congo | AFP | Congo voters go to the polls Sunday in legislative elections in the oil-rich African country, the first since violence-marred presidential polls last year which returned Denis Sassou Nguesso to power. While no fresh violence is expected opposition parties have cried foul, as over 2 million …
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