Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | Sierra Leone’s electoral commission sounded the alarm on Saturday over a wave of violence between rival groups ahead of a run-off presidential vote later this month. Opposition leader Julius Maada Bio, from the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), took 43.3 percent of votes in …
Read More »Putin eyes fourth term as Russians go to polls
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russians voted Sunday in an election set to hand President Vladimir Putin a fourth Kremlin term, as the country is embroiled in a crisis with Britain and its allies over a spy poisoning. With the vast country stretching across 11 time zones, polls opened in …
Read More »No room for debate as Egypt’s Sisi poised for second term
Cairo, Egypt | AFP | With Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on the cusp of winning a second term in this month’s election, what’s left of the opposition is reduced to praying he will step aside in four years. There is little else his critics can realistically hope for after …
Read More »UN drugs body approves controls on deadly opioid
Vienna, AUSTRIA | AFP | A UN’s anti-drug body added carfentanil, a synthetic substance estimated to be thousands of times more potent than morphine, to its list of controlled substances on Wednesday. The US had been pushing for the move, and welcomed the decision the UN’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs’ (CND) …
Read More »Sierra Leone third parties complain after election setback
Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | Two upstart Sierra Leone political parties said Wednesday they had filed complaints over this month’s elections after failing to make the cut for the second round of the presidential ballot. The National Grand Coalition (NGC) took 6.9 percent of votes in the March 7 elections …
Read More »Jinja East voters go to polls as FDC’s Mwiru and NRM’s Nabeta tussle it out
Kampala, Uganda | GODFREY SSALI | Voters in Jinja East go to the polls Thursday to elect a new Member of Parliament in a hotly contested by-election. The seat fell vacant in January following a Court of Appeal ruling that upheld an earlier ruling by the Jinja High Court which overturned …
Read More »Putin says he ordered plane shot down before Sochi Olympics
Moscow, RUSSIAN FEDERATION | AFP | Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an order to shoot down a passenger plane he believed would be used in a terror attack at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, he said in a new documentary. The plane was travelling from Ukraine to Turkey when Putin …
Read More »Putin says he will ‘never’ give Crimea back to Ukraine
Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that under no circumstances would he give Crimea back to Ukraine, speaking in a new documentary released Sunday ahead of his expected re-election in next week’s poll. “What, have you gone mad?” he told a journalist who asked him if …
Read More »SLeone opposition candidate edges ahead in presidential poll
Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP | The opposition challenger in Sierra Leone’s presidential election edged ahead of the ruling party candidate by fewer than 15,000 votes, according to new partial results released on Sunday. Julius Maada Bio has garnered 43.4 percent of the vote to 42.6 percent for Samura Kamara with …
Read More »Colombians vote in elections seen as test for peace deal
Bogota, Colombia | AFP | Colombians went to the polls Sunday to elect a new Congress with a resurgent right, bitterly opposed to a peace deal that allows leftist former rebels to participate, expected to poll strongly. The election is set to be the calmest in half a century of …
Read More »