Niamey, Niger | AFP | Ten troops have been killed on Niger’s border with Nigeria in a joint operation by the two countries against “bandits”, Nigerien Defence Minister Kalla Moutari said on Monday. “Five Nigerien and five Nigerian” troops and 11 enemy fighters were killed in the operation, launched against …

Buenos Aires, Argentina | AFP | Diego Maradona has given his backing to Napoli defender Kalidou Koulibaly after the Senegalese international was subjected to racist abuse by Inter Milan supporters last week. Argentina great Maradona, who won the Serie A title with Napoli in 1987 and 1990, posted a picture …

Tokyo, Japan | AFP | Floyd Mayweather beat Japanese kickboxing phenomenon Tenshin Nasukawa by a technical knockout on Monday in the first round of a New Year’s Eve “exhibition” bout that brought the US boxing superstar out of retirement. Mayweather floored Nasukawa, a kickboxer less than half his age, three …

Washington, United States | AFP | A US judge who ruled earlier this month that Obamacare is unconstitutional has said the health care law can stand while his decision is appealed. In a stay order issued Sunday, Texas-based Judge Reed O’Connor said that while he was confident his ruling would …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Jan.05:  Former Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo Retired Church of Uganda Archbishop, Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo has lost the battle to cancer at Kampala Hospital in Kololo. He had returned to Uganda in June 2017 from the UK, where he had been admitted at St. Mary’s Hospital …

Tampa, United States | AFP | A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule some four billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The US space agency will ring in the New Year …

Beni, DR Congo | AFP | Thousands of voters, weary from frequent armed attacks and an ongoing Ebola outbreak, proudly cast ballots in a northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo — even though they will count for nothing. Citing security and health fears, the country’s national electoral commission …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Tororo man eats cobra to avenge his lost chicken Kenneth Odiom 34, shocked fellow villagers in Kwapa central village in Tororo district when, for his birthday meal, he hunted and killed a venomous cobra snake that had been eating his chickens and ate it. The …

We have to know what matters to people, improves their wellbeing, and how we can supply it more COMMENT | JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ | Just under ten years ago, the International Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress issued its report, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russian President Vladimir Putin has reassured his US counterpart Donald Trump that Moscow remains “open to dialogue” despite the year ending without the hoped-for warming of relations, the Kremlin said on Sunday. “Russian-US relations remain an important factor in order to guarantee strategic stability and …