JOHANNESBURG – Police in South Africa yesterday said they had arrested anti-Western activist Kemi Seba, who is wanted in Benin for “inciting rebellion” after he supported a foiled coup in December. Seba, whose real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, heads the NGO Pan-Africanist Emergency and is known for his tirades against France and...
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump said the leaders of Israel and Lebanon were set to speak yesterday in what would be a historic first, but there was no confirmation from either side. Trump’s announcement comes as Washington pushes to ease hostilities following the first direct talks between the two countries in decades this week,...
AFGHANISTAN – In the jagged Hindu Kush in eastern Afghanistan, hundreds of men dug into the rocky bed of the Kunar River searching for a few grams of gold dust as an alternative source of income. At the foot of imposing peaks, some still covered in snow in April, they toiled near the border with...
YAOUNDÉ – Pope Leo XIV is to arrive in Cameroon on Wednesday, the second stage of an African tour shadowed by insults from US president Donald Trump and suicide attacks in Algeria on his first day. The pontiff is to meet Cameroonian President Paul Biya at the start of his four-day visit to the mainly...
EAST LONDON – Hundreds of red-clad supporters of radical left-wing opposition leader Julius Malema gathered in a South African city yesterday ahead of his sentencing for firing anassault rifle at a rally eight years ago. The case against the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party leader was laid by the small far-right group AfriForum, which has...
RAIPUR – The death toll from a boiler blast at a power plant in central India has risen to 19, a police officer said yesterday, noting 17 others were injured. The explosion occurred on Tuesday at a facility operated by Vedanta Limited, a subsidiary of London-listed Vedanta Resources, in Sakti district of Chhattisgarh state. “The...
GENEVA – Nearly 700 civilians have reportedly been killed in drone strikes in Sudan since January, the United Nations aid chief said yesterday, decrying that three years of civil war had created the “world’s largest humanitarian crisis”. Now entering a fourth year, the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has...
PARIS – Washington’s decision to blockade Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz is sending tremors through global energy markets, raising fears of a fresh oil shock by threatening supplies to Asia. Iran had continued to pump crude to Asia since the start of the Middle East war, partly shielded by its elusive “dark fleet”....
PARIS – France and Britain will work on a “peaceful multinational mission” to restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz but it would be “separate from the warring parties”, French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday. US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February sparked a region-wide war and brought to a near standstill traffic through the...
BUDAPEST – Congratulations from across Europe poured in yesterday for Hungarian political newcomer Peter Magyar, who defeated nationalist Viktor Orban in elections seen as a blow to right-wing populism world-wide. Orban, a self-described “thorn” in the EU’s side and defender of “illiberal democracy”, lost Sunday’s elections after 16 years in power, despite vocal support from...