BEIJING – Severe flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall killed four people and left five others missing in southwestern China’s Guizhou province, state media said yesterday, with authorities evacuating thousands. Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer, when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heat. Guizhou’s Guiding...
LAGOS – Nigeria and the United States have carried out fresh strikes against Islamic State jihadists in northeast Nigeria, the US military said yesterday, with the Nigerian army saying at least 20 jihadists were killed. The strikes were conducted on Sunday, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement. They came two days after the...
TEHRAN – Iran yesterday said it had responded to a new US proposal aimed at ending the war, adding that exchanges were continuing despite Iranian media reports describing Washington’s demands as excessive. Washington and Tehran have been swapping proposals in an effort to end the conflict which broke out on 28 February. The two sides...
KINSHASA – An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 80 as authorities warned there was no vaccine for the strain in a crisis that the World Health Organisation declared an international health emergency yesterday. A total of 88 deaths and 336 suspected cases of the highly contagious haemorrhagic fever...
STOCKHOLM – The European Union’s health agency ECDC said on Wednesday there was nothing to suggest that the Andes strain of hantavirus had mutated following a deadly outbreak of the illness on a cruise ship. The deaths of three passengers from a rare hantavirus outbreak on a cruise from Argentina to Cape Verde has sparked...
KABUL – The United Nations could feed a million additional children at risk of malnutrition in Afghanistan if the country’s conflict with Pakistan and the Iran war had not inflated prices and transport costs, a senior official told AFP. Afghanistan saw a record rise in malnutrition cases in 2025, following a deadly earthquake, climate disasters,...
LAGOS – A Nigerian court on Wednesday sentenced former power minister Saleh Mamman to 75 years in jail for siphoning off millions of dollars from hydro-electricity projects. Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said Mamman was found guilty of laundering 33.8 billion naira (US$24.6 million). Nigeria is Africa’s fourth-largest economy and...
NAIROBI – A South African laboratory will produce a generic version of a new HIV treatment, in a major step forward for medical sovereignty in Africa, the international health agency Unitaid said on Tuesday. Lenacapavir, developed by the US pharmaceutical company Gilead, is an injectable HIV treatment that only needs to be administered twice a...
PARIS – When a mosquito tries to bite biology professor David Inouye during fieldwork among orchids in Colorado, he pauses before swatting the bug. If it’s dusted with pollen, he lets it live. “I give those mosquitoes a pass to help the orchids,” Inouye said. Mosquitoes are better known as bloodsuckers that spread malaria, dengue...
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa ruled out resigning on Monday and said he would mount a legal challenge to impeachment proceedings against him in court over a US$4 million cash-heist scandal. The case resurfaced last week after a court decision overturned the rejection of a 2022 parliamentary report that concluded Ramaphosa “may have...