NAIROBI – Kenyan police yesterday said they had arrested a “serial killer” suspect who had confessed to murdering 42 women before dumping their dismembered bodies in a Nairobi rubbish tip. Since Friday, a total of nine mutilated and dismembered bodies trussed in plastic bags have been pulled from the garbage site in the Mukuru slum...
WASHINGTON – World leaders reacted with shock to the wounding of Donald Trump in an assassination attempt against the former US president at an election rally. Presidents and prime ministers globally spoke out against political violence, and expressed support for those affected by the shooting on Saturday, which killed one bystander and left two other...
JOS, NIGERIA – A school in central Nigeria collapsed on Friday, killing at least 21 people, mostly pupils as they were sitting their exams, the Red Cross and witnesses said. Trapped pupils cried for help under the rubble as desperate parents looked for their children after the Saint Academy school in Jos North district of...
JOHANNESBURG – South African parties on Friday demanded investigations into claims that the leader of the leftist opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) took bribes as part of a US$130 million bank scandal. The claims emerged as the former chairman of VBS Mutual Bank was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday on multiple counts of...
NEW DELHI – Raped by her husband on her wedding night aged 17, Divya described her repeated suffering, an all-too-common account in India, permitted by a terrifying colonial-era legal loophole. “I told him I have never had sex and asked him if we can take it slowly and try to understand it. He said: ‘No,...
MOMBASA – The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult went on trial yesterday on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world. Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-accused,...
TOKYO – Japan’s top court ruled yesterday that a defunct eugenics law under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilised between 1948 and 1996, wasunconstitutional. The Supreme Court also ruled that a 20-year statute of limitations on compensation claims could not be applied, a major victory for victims who have endured decades of suffering. Japan’s...
NAIROBI – Kenyan police have arrested more than 270 people masquerading as protesters who are suspected of going on a criminal rampage during anti-government rallies on Tuesday. Widespread looting and property damage was reported during the youth-led demonstrations in various cities across the country, which some protesters said had been infiltrated by “goons”. “Security forces...
OSLO – The Norwegian government yesterday called off a plan to sell the last privately-owned piece of land on the strategic Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard to prevent its acquisition by China. The remote Sore Fagerfjord property in southwestern Svalbard – 60 square kilometres of mountains, plains and a glacier – was on sale for 300...
GAZA STRIP – Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City’s Shujaiya district for a fourth day yesterday, months after the Israeli army declared Hamas’s command structure dismantled in the northern area. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighbourhood, where the army said it has fought Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants “above and...