The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has resolved to withdraw all its ambassadors from Mali and close land and air borders between member-countries and Mali. This resolution was conveyed in a communiqué issued after an Extraordinary Summit of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government...
WORLD
A Myanmar court on Monday sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison, according to sources familiar with the court proceedings. She was accused of breaking coronavirus restrictions and possessing unlicensed walkie-talkies. She allegedly broke telecommunications and import-export laws in relation to walkie-talkies. Journalists...
At least 19 people died and dozens were injured when a fire tore through a high-rise apartment building in New York City on Sunday, its mayor said, in one of America’s worst residential fires in recent memory. Both the New York Times and CNN sourced unnamed officials as saying...
A prominent Afghan university professor who openly criticised the Taliban’s hardline regime has been arrested in Kabul, a spokesman for the government said. Professor Faizullah Jalal has made several appearances on television talk shows since the previous US-backed government was ousted in August, blaming the Taliban for the worsening...
Tigrayan rebels claimed Saturday that dozens of people had been killed in a drone strike on a camp for civilians displaced by the brutal war in northern Ethiopia. Reports of the attack emerged just a day after the government declared surprise pardons for a number of detained opposition leaders,...
The United Nations said on Saturday it would invite Sudanese military leaders, political parties and other groups to take part in discussions aimed at ending a crisis unleashed by a coup in October. UN mediation in the weeks after the coup succeeded in reinstating Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, but...
At least seven people have died and nine were seriously injured when a wall of rock collapsed on top of motor boats below a waterfall in southeastern Brazil on Saturday, the fire department said. A tower of rocks suddenly broke away from the canyon wall and came crashing down...
Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has urged U.S. President Joe Biden to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba which has been operational for 20 years this month. The camp stands for arbitrariness, injustice and torture, Amnesty’s U.S. expert, Sumit Bhattacharyya, told dpa in Washington. Bhattacharyya urged Biden...
Ethiopian government says it will begin dialogue with political opposition figures after announcing a list of prominent opposition leaders to be released from prison. “The key to lasting peace is dialogue,” said the statement issued by the government communications office. “One of the moral obligations of a victor is...
At least 14 people were killed and 17 injured Saturday when a coach and a minibus smashed into each other at high speed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, security officials said. The minibus and the coach, which had come from the capital Cairo and was heading for the Red Sea...
Three white men convicted of murdering African American jogger Ahmaud Arbery after chasing him in their pickup trucks were sentenced to life in prison Friday in a case that highlighted US tensions over racial justice. Travis McMichael, 35, and his father Gregory McMichael, 66, were sentenced to life without...
Kazakhstan’s authoritarian leader says he has ordered security forces to “fire without warning”, amid a violent crackdown on anti-government protests. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also said “20,000 bandits” had attacked the main city of Almaty, the epicentre of protests sparked by a fuel price hike. He has blamed foreign-trained “terrorists”,...
The key to the prison cell on Robben Island once occupied by Nelson Mandela is going to be returned to South Africa rather than be auctioned in the US, a minister says. The auction had been due to take place in New York on 28 January until South Africa’s...
Three suspected pirates detained for six weeks on board a Danish naval frigate off West Africa have been released at sea, after Denmark’s justice minister waived charges of attempted manslaughter against them. The men were detained in November, after an exchange of fire with the Danish military in the...
Three Eritrean’s living in a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s Tigray region were killed in an airstrike on Wednesday, the UN says. Two of the dead were children. Several other people were injured in the attack on the Mai Aini camp. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said...
Tanzania’s parliamentary speaker Job Ndugai has resigned days after clashing with the president over foreign debts. The speaker said his resignation was a personal and voluntary decision taken in the interests of the nation. But it came after he said Tanzania was at risk of being auctioned off following...
At least 20 people were trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building after an explosion on Friday in the Chinese city of Chongqing, according to state media. The blast at 12:10 pm (0410 GMT) was caused by a “suspected gas leak” and led to the collapse of a...
Fresh violence erupted in Kazakhstan’s largest city on Thursday as Russia rushed in paratroopers to put down a countrywide uprising in one of Moscow’s closest former Soviet allies. Police in the main city Almaty said they had killed dozens of protesters. The authorities said at least 18 members of...
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says 55 journalists and media professionals were killed in 2021, noting that impunity against journalists is alarmingly widespread. “Once again in 2021, far too many journalists paid the ultimate price to bring truth to light,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said on Thursday....
President Muhammadu Buhari has received a Special Envoy from Col. Assimi Goita, the Transitional President of Mali. Mr Femi Adesina, the president’s spokesman in a statement on Thursday in Abuja, said President Buhari promised that Nigeria would do her level best for the sister country, within the requirements of...