Africa - Page 18

Nigerian officials failed to confirm or deny news this week that nearly 100 girls had died in captivity as the nation observed four years since Boko Haram abducted over 200 girls from the northeastern village of Chibok.

Contents: Israel’s top court orders 207 African migrants to be released from jail; Uganda first agrees to accept Israel’s African migrants, then backs down

Contents: UN says DR Congo humanitarian crisis at highest emergency level; DR Congo boycotts its own international humanitarian conference for DR Congo; U.S., France, Britain launch Syria attack in retaliation for al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons

Tanzania’s new suite of Internet regulations includes a $930 annual fee for anyone who runs a blog, coupled with extensive registration paperwork that includes a bizarre amount of financial information about the applicant, comparable to the business plan that would be submitted to secure a commercial loan from a bank.

Boko Haram terrorists have already killed at least 120 civilians this year, including more than 30 on Easter Sunday alone, the United Nations reported.

The government of Rwanda has closed thousands of churches and dozens of mosques in a bid to establish tighter state control over religion, following President Paul Kagame’s remarks that his country has too many places of worship.

Contents: Israel’s government in turmoil over failure to deport African migrants; Netanyahu: We fell into a ‘trap’ with failed deportation plan

Boko Haram refuses to release a 15-year-old Christian girl kidnapped this month along with 110 other schoolgirls because she met the terrorist organization’s efforts to convert her to Islam with rebuffs, her parents revealed.

Contents: Ethiopia chooses Oromo leader, Abiy Ahmed, hoping to reduce violence; Kenya’s government vs the judiciary — tensions mount over farcical deportation spectacle

A judge in South Africa sentenced a man to four life sentences in prison on Tuesday for the murder of his nieces and nephews – whose ears, the court found, he planned to sell at a high price to a witch doctor for use in potions.

Contents: Massive earth fissure suddenly opens up in mid-Kenya, signaling an eventual split in all of Africa; How China would lose a war with the United States; ISIS-linked terrorists in Afghanistan kill 32 in bombing of Shia Shrine in Kabul

The Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram released dozens of girls kidnapped from a secondary school in Dapchi, northern Nigeria, on Wednesday on the condition that their parents keep them from going back to school and marry them off, instead.

A legal immigrant from Ghana pleaded guilty this week to drugging, tying up, and molesting an elderly woman and is expected to be deported from the United States.

Communist China is covertly intensifying its military footprint across Africa, reports Voice of America (VOA), echoing recent comments from the top U.S. commander on the continent.

U.S. military troops in Niger repelled an attack in Niger by Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists in December, months after the terrorist group ambushed a Green Beret-led team in October, killing four American service members, the Pentagon has acknowledged.

In his first annual message to the legislature in January – roughly equivalent in ceremonial significance to a State of the Union address – Liberian President George Manneh Weah called for eliminating the “unnecessary, racist, and inappropriate” constitutional clause that bars non-blacks from becoming full citizens of his nation. Liberia’s top Muslim cleric responded this week by warning that black citizens would be marginalized and oppressed if the rules are changed.

A Nigerian High Court has ordered manufacturers of condoms to warn users that it cannot guarantee 100 percent safe sex and to add the phrase, “Total abstinence or faithfulness is the best option.”

The State Department’s concerted effort to highlight predatory lending and military expansion by Beijing’s Communist Party has triggered stern condemnation from China’s foreign ministry and state media, both of which have urged the international community to ignore Washington’s “carping” on the issue.

A Boko Haram commander released last year in exchange for 82 abducted schoolgirls resurfaced in a video this week, boasting of the jihadi group’s control of northern Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest and mocking government claims that the group has been defeated.

WASHINGTON, DC — China is employing “neo-colonialism” tactics in Africa in the form of predatory loans collateralized with natural resources and strategic assets, experts cautioned lawmakers on Wednesday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned African states to be wary of incurring too much debt from creditor China, which seeks to “encourage dependency” to undermine their sovereignty, in a speech Monday before heading on his first trip as America’s top diplomat to the country.

China’s Communist Party has spent years promoting the value its “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure project could have for Africa. As the Trump administration ramps up its campaign to turn Africa away from China, some columnists throughout the continent appear to be listening.

The State Department’s top official on Africa told reporters on Monday that Washington is growing concerned with China’s presence on the continent, particularly the “high rates of indebtedness” incurred by African countries accepting concessionary loans from Beijing.

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-affiliated terrorists are disseminating a propaganda video online purporting to show a deadly ambush in Niger in which jihadists killed four U.S. soldiers and wounded two others last October.

Increasingly isolated in Europe, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Algeria Tuesday for a whirlwind five-day tour of Africa intended to boost his economy and raise the diplomatic profile of his country tarnished by an ongoing invasion of Syria and repeated failures to prevent terror attacks in urban tourist centers.

The governor of Yobe state, Nigeria, accused the federal government on Monday of withdrawing troops from a key at-risk region two weeks ago, shortly before the terrorist group Boko Haram attacked a school complex and abducted over one hundred girls.

Nigeria’s Justice Ministry announced on Monday that it had convicted 205 defendants accused of being members of the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram. Abuja freed over 500 such suspects this week, however, indicating that less than half of those processed by the Nigerian court system are being convicted.

A Boko Haram attack on a secondary school in Nigeria’s Yobe state may have resulted in the kidnapping of 94 girls, recalling the mass abduction of nearly 300 by the Islamic State-affiliated terrorists in 2014.

Police in Zimbabwe arrested a senior official and professor at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) on Friday for having participated in issuing former First Lady Grace Mugabe a Ph.D. which she did not qualify for, according to multiple reports.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari welcomed Venezuela’s top diplomat to the country this week, just as Abuja honors North Korea with floral arrangements to honor Kim Jong-Il and Eternal President Kim Il-Sung.

In a judicial proceeding Nigeria’s courts have deemed unprecedented, the federal government announced it would begin to process 700 Boko Haram suspects awaiting trial at a military detention proceeding on Monday.

A new report to the U.N. Security Council by independent monitors found North Korea earned nearly $200 million in 2017 by violating sanctions to export banned commodities, including coal shipped to ports in Russia and China, and weapons sold to customers in Syria and Myanmar.

The United States is ready to increase pressure on African nations maintaining diplomatic, trading, or military ties to North Korea, the Financial Times has detailed. In an attempt to further squeeze the country’s economy as the regime expands its nuclear program, the State

Most media organisations focused on George Soros’s comments about social media and the oligarchy of information arbiters following his annual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. But the Open Society Foundations chief gave away some key

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni backed President Donald Trump’s alleged comments about “shithole countries,” praising him for talking about “Africans’ weaknesses frankly.”

The YouTube sensations known as Diamond and Silk, former Democrats who left the party to support President Donald Trump, slammed the news media for spending a week focused on unsubstantiated claims that Donald Trump may have used an expletive to refer to Africa and Haiti.