Heads of state gathered Saturday at the African Union headquarters to kick off a two-day summit as the continent reels from a spate of military coups and the coronavirus pandemic. The summit also comes as the 55-member bloc faces pressure to push for a ceasefire in host country Ethiopia,...
WORLD
Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga of Mali on Friday said the country would no longer allow foreign forces to remain in the country without predetermined conditions. Maiga told the Anadolu news agency that “we can no longer allow foreign forces to enter our territory without predetermined conditions. “We can...
UN on Thursday expressed concern over reported civilian casualties but welcomed any move contributing to the defeat of ISIL terror group in Syria. “The UN system as a whole has been very united in efforts to act against Da’esh, so any successes against them are to be welcomed,” the...
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has arrived at Beijing for the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. “He will also meet with the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, and Chinese authorities,” the Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq told journalists at UN headquarters in...
The Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Nana Akufo-Addo on Thursday said the coup in Mali was “contagious” and had led to subsequent coups in the region. Akufo-Addo explained that Mali’s coup in August 2020 was followed by a second military coup in the West...
Around 360 square kilometres of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon were lost to deforestation in January alone. This is the highest amount recorded for January since 2015, the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) said on Wednesday, citing provisional figures. Inpe uses satellite imagery for its analysis, using a...
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has joined other West African leaders for an emergency summit following the spate of coups in the subregion. Osinbajo left with Nigeria’s delegate early Thursday for Accra, Ghana for the Extraordinary Summit of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government deliberating. Emergency talks...
No fewer than 50 people, including women and children, were killed in an attack on Tuesday night at a site for internally displaced people in Savo, Ituri Province, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN said on Wednesday. According to the UN Mission in the country...
Guinea-Bissau’s capital appeared calm on Wednesday a day after President Umaro Sissoco Embalo survived a gun attack, as France joined condemnation for what has been called an attempted coup in one of Africa’s most unstable countries. Heavily armed men on Tuesday afternoon surrounded government buildings in the capital Bissau...
The United States will deploy a guided-missile destroyer and state-of-the-art fighter jets to help defend the United Arab Emirates after a series of missile attacks by Yemeni rebels, a US statement said Wednesday. The deployment, to “assist the UAE against the current threat”, follows a phone call between Defence...
Queen Elizabeth II on Sunday becomes the first British monarch to reign for 70 years, heralding the start of her Platinum Jubilee year despite her retreat from public view. But the landmark date this weekend will see little fanfare, as the 95-year-old monarch traditionally spends the anniversary of the...
The heaviest flooding to hit Ecuador in two decades has killed at least 24 people in Quito, inundating homes, swamping cars, and sweeping away athletes and spectators on a sports field, officials said Tuesday. A dozen people are missing and 48 injured, Ecuador’s SNGRE emergency service said on Twitter....
Sustained gunfire was heard on Tuesday near the seat of government in the coup-prone West African state of Guinea-Bissau, AFP reporters said, as a regional bloc condemned what it called an “attempted coup”. Heavily-armed men surrounded the Palace of Government, where President Umaro Sissoco Embalo and Prime Minister Nuno...
Separatist rebels have killed four Senegalese soldiers and are holding seven hostage after a clash on the border between Senegal and The Gambia last week, the Senegalese army said in a statement. Three soldiers died in the fighting on January 24 between the Senegalese army and rebels from the...
A female lion in an Iranian zoo has attacked and killed a keeper and escaped with a mate before the pair was captured again, local media reported on Monday. “The lioness, which has been in the zoo for several years, managed to open a door of the cage, get...
Five people were killed Monday when a minibus in northeast Kenya was destroyed by a roadside bomb during an ambush by armed men near the border of Somalia, police said. The attackers opened fire on the 14-seater vehicle after it ran over the explosive about eight kilometres (five miles)...
The African Union said Monday it had suspended Burkina Faso in response to the January 24 coup that ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. The bloc’s 15-member Peace and Security Council said on Twitter it had voted “to suspend the participation of #BurkinaFaso in all AU activities until the...
Italy’s parties Saturday voted overwhelmingly for outgoing President Sergio Mattarella to remain for another term, averting the political chaos that a failure to elect his successor could have sparked in the eurozone’s third-largest economy. Electing the 80-year-old ended weeks of hand-wringing over whether prized Prime Minister Mario Draghi should...
A baby in his car seat. A man in bed. A girl walking with her mother: Stray bullets killed each of them days apart as surging gun violence ripples through the United States. In addition to the people killed in suicides or the homicides hitting record levels in some...
European states combating militants in Mali will try to find a way to keep their mission going. But there are limits to the price that France is prepared to pay to remain there, French Defence Minister, Florence Parly, said on Saturday. Relations between Mali’s military junta and its international...