ADDIS ABABA – Moves by the dominant party in Ethiopia’s Tigray to restore its control of the region could lead to “disastrous” renewed conflict with the federal government, analysts warned yesterday. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fought a brutal civil war against the federal government between 2020 and 2022 that claimed at least 600...
SUVA – As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defence against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation, a popular tourist destination of just under a million people, there were over 2 000 new HIV cases...
BEIJING – The death toll from a giant explosion at a fireworks factory in central China rose to 26, with 61 more injured, officials said on Tuesday. The explosion occurred at around 16h43 on Monday at the Liuyang Huasheng Fireworks Manufacturing and Display Company in Liuyang, Hunan province, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Following the blast,...
BRIA – In a classroom in Bria in the unstable eastern Central African Republic, former child soldiers were learning to sew. It is a way to help the 14 to17 year olds move on from the violence they suffered at the hands of the country’s many armed groups. “It’s not easy teaching them. Some still...
MUMBAI – An Indian pilot group has submitted a letter to the aviation ministry suggesting that an electrical failure, rather than pilot action, could have caused the deadly Air India crash last year. The submission by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), which has more than 5,000 members, comes ahead of the expected final report...
VIENNA – A prominent data protection group yesterday filed a complaint in Austria against LinkedIn over the professional networking platform’s selling of user data. Vienna-based Noyb, which stands for “None of Your Business”, said it filed a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority on behalf of a LinkedIn user wanting access to his data....
DUBAI – The UAE yesterday said Iran fired two drones at a tanker affiliated with its state oil company ADNOC in the Strait of Hormuz, condemning the attack.“Targeting commercial shipping and using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail represents acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the foreign...
THE HAGUE – A suspected outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship, on which three people have died, presents a low risk to the public, the WHO Europe said yesterday, as Dutch authorities planned to repatriate two sick people. “The risk to the wider public remains low. There is no need for panic or travel...
JOHANNESBURG – A South African court last week ordered the deportation of the youngest son of Zimbabwe’s former leader Robert Mugabe, implicated in the shooting of a gardener after an altercation.Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe has been in custody since mid-February alongside his cousin and co-accused, Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze, on attempted murder charges stemming from an incident...
LAGOS – Nigeria is planning a “voluntary repatriation” of citizens living in South Africa amid fears that anti-immigration attacks on Africans could spike, the foreign ministry said. South Africa – the continent’s most industrialised nation – has seen repeated waves of xenophobic and anti-migrant protests, including renewed violence in recent weeks that has targeted mostly...