Gaza City, Palestinian Territories | AFP | Seated with other students on the steps at the Islamic University of Gaza with his backpack, the young Italian doctor-to-be draws looks from passersby. Riccardo Corradini is the first exchange student in the Gaza Strip under a popular European programme known as Erasmus …

Paris, France | AFP |  Attacks on two mosques in New Zealand which left at least 49 people dead on Friday have sparked horror, revulsion and dismay around the world. One of the gunmen – believed to be an Australian extremist — apparently livestreamed the deadly assault. “It is clear …

  Berlin, Germany | AFP |  Germany has agreed to speed up the return of human remains and artwork from former African colonies where the country carried out brutal massacres and pillaged indigenous heritage. The German culture and foreign ministries as well as regional and local cultural authorities signed a …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | With the world’s forests increasingly under threat from climate change and logging, leaders and top bank chiefs pledged billions on Thursday to help reverse the steep decline in Africa’s woodland areas. So far this century East Africa alone has lost around 6 million hectares of …

Tulu Fara, Ethiopia | AFP | From a quiet farmland at the base of rolling hills outside Ethiopia’s capital, the sound of wailing rang through the air. Devastated mourners flung themselves onto a ground littered with business cards, seat covers and shards of aluminium. They cried the names of loved …

AMISOM announces three days of mourning in honour of the late Acting Police Commissioner Mogadishu, Somalia | THE INDEPENDENT | The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), is observing three days of mourning in honour of the late Acting Police Commissioner Christine Alalo, who perished in the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Athletics Kenya (AK) on Thursday lambasted a decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to scrap the 5,000 metres from the Diamond League programme as “illegitimate”. Their protest was quickly followed by another from the Ethiopian athletics federation, that asked the IAAF to reconsider …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | In voting against Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal this week, hardline supporters of Brexit risked helping those who want to undermine the whole process. The so-called Brexiteers declared victory on Tuesday when the House of Commons rejected May’s EU withdrawal agreement for a …

San Francisco, United States | AFP | Facebook grappled with challenges on two fronts Wednesday, an hours-long outage and intensified scrutiny from investigators reportedly probing data deals struck by the world’s largest social network. As the outage continued, gripes flooded rival Twitter as well as a comments section on downdetector.com, …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | President Yoweri Museveni has emphasized that the free movement of goods and services is a matter of survival for Uganda, East Africa and Africa. “Supporting one another’s prosperity by buying one another’s goods and services is the correct way. With our united market, we can, …