Our website use cookies to improve and personalize your experience and to display advertisements (if any). Our website may also include cookies from third parties like Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Youtube. By using the website, you consent to the use of cookies.

How Nigeria’s courts are now targeting the support networks behind its terror kingpins

How Nigeria’s courts are now targeting the support networks behind its terror kingpins

NINE days after Nigerian troops killed bandit kingpin Kachallah Ibrahim Battujo in a forest near Iluke, Kogi State, the Federal High Court in Abuja delivered a sentence that did more than close a single case file. It signalled, in stark legal terms, that the State now regards a terrorist's family circle as a legitimate front in the war against banditry -  not merely as collateral relatives, but as functioning nodes in a logistics chain. Justice Hauwa Joseph Yilwa on Friday sentenced Safiya Salihu and Halima Abdullahi - Battujo's mother and sister - to 40 years' imprisonment each, after both women…
Read More
Africa told to fund its own survival as Ebola death toll passes 247

Africa told to fund its own survival as Ebola death toll passes 247

THE Ebola outbreak tearing through eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has crossed a grim new threshold this week, and with it has come an unusually blunt reckoning from the continent's own health leadership: Africa cannot keep waiting on foreign donors to save it from diseases the rest of the world has little incentive to cure. DRC's health ministry confirmed on Saturday that the outbreak had grown to 956 confirmed cases and 247 deaths, up from 933 cases and 245 deaths the previous day. Ituri province, the epicentre, now accounts for more than 91 percent of confirmed infections, with the contact-tracing…
Read More
Inside Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s war on Uganda’s press, parliament and opposition

Inside Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s war on Uganda’s press, parliament and opposition

GENERAL Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda's Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and the only son of President Yoweri Museveni, has over the past fortnight escalated a years-long pattern of social media threats against the media, the judiciary, Parliament and the opposition into what critics now describe as an open campaign of intimidation against anyone who crosses him. In a rapid-fire series of posts on X, the General has vowed to shut down Daily Monitor and NTV Uganda, the country's two most prominent independent newsrooms, both owned by Nation Media Group, accusing the outlets of years of coverage he regards as hostile to…
Read More
Africa footballer of the year – PSG, Morocco’s Hakimi – to stand trial for rape

Africa footballer of the year – PSG, Morocco’s Hakimi – to stand trial for rape

ACHRAF Hakimi spent Thursday night marshalling Morocco's defence against Scotland in Foxborough, Massachusetts, wearing the captain's armband of a team chasing only its second World Cup knockout berth in history. Less than 24 hours earlier, a court in Versailles had settled a question that has trailed him for more than three years: he will stand trial for rape. The Versailles Court of Appeal confirmed on Friday that it had rejected Hakimi's bid to overturn a February ruling sending him to a criminal court on a rape charge, closing off the last avenue by which the Paris Saint-Germain and Morocco right-back…
Read More
Ebola outbreak threatens displaced communities in DRC as conflict, disease converge

Ebola outbreak threatens displaced communities in DRC as conflict, disease converge

THE accelerating spread of the Bundibugyo Ebola virus in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is now a direct threat to more than 2 million forcibly displaced people, UNHCR warns, with the risk of cross-border transmission mounting across an interconnected region where fighting continues alongside the outbreak. “UNHCR is deeply concerned by the accelerating spread of Bundibugyo Ebola virus disease in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the growing risks it poses to displaced communities across the region,” said Dr. Allen Maina, UNHCR’s Head of Public Health, at a press briefing today at Geneva’s Palais des Nations. “For…
Read More
Bayede, Sir Wicknell: a king, a jet and passport number three

Bayede, Sir Wicknell: a king, a jet and passport number three

THERE are men who measure a good month by a salary increase. Sir Wicknell Chivayo measures his in sovereign instruments. In the space of roughly a week, the Zimbabwean businessman first welcomed a Gulfstream G550 - list price US$34 million - onto the tarmac at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport, then flew on to the Kingdom of Eswatini, where he was received in private audience by His Majesty King Mswati III at the Royal Palace. He left Mbabane a citizen of the kingdom, diplomatic passport in hand, and - by his own telling - newly adopted as the monarch’s “young,…
Read More
Ex Nigerian Oil Minister cleared of criminal charges in UK court

Ex Nigerian Oil Minister cleared of criminal charges in UK court

FOR eleven years, Diezani Alison-Madueke lived as a woman accused - her name a byword in two countries for the worst excesses of oil-fed power, her image fixed in the global imagination somewhere between “Oil Queen” and prime exhibit in the case against Nigeria’s plundered petroleum patrimony. This week, a London jury took that image apart, verdict by verdict, count by count, until nothing of the prosecution’s case remained standing. Six charges. Six not-guilty verdicts. Forty-six hours of deliberation to undo eleven years of accusation. 11YEARS OF INVESTIGATION46+HOURS OF DELIBERATION6CHARGES, ALL DISMISSED It is one of the most consequential corruption-trial…
Read More
South African scientists make breakthrough in decoding cancer’s most effective survival strategy

South African scientists make breakthrough in decoding cancer’s most effective survival strategy

IN the intricate biology of the human body, organs such as the breast, the colon and the lungs are lined with a defensive barrier known as the epithelium. At the heart of this barrier sits a remarkable protein called Mucin-1 (MUC1). In a healthy body, MUC1 is like a sentinel. It stands on the cell wall, draped in a complex “armour” of long chains of sugar molecules (carbohydrates), where it serves as a physical shield against bacteria, viruses and toxins. Crucially, it communicates with the immune system, telling our natural defences when the body is under threat. But in the…
Read More
Tens of thousands march as South Africa scrambles to manage growing illegal‑migration crisis

Tens of thousands march as South Africa scrambles to manage growing illegal‑migration crisis

AS fresh anti‑immigrant marches erupt in Gauteng townships and towns across South Africa, Pretoria is confronting a mounting migration crisis that has strained domestic social cohesion and frayed relations with neighbouring states. This week, thousands marched across South Africa- the latest in a string of protests that have swept through communities since early 2026 - demanding tougher action against undocumented foreigners. At the same time, the Department of Home Affairs and other agencies are preparing to deport about 7,000 Malawian nationals who have volunteered for repatriation after being identified as in the country without legal status. Deputy President Paul Mashatile…
Read More
Zimbabwe’s Parliament tears up its own Constitution

Zimbabwe’s Parliament tears up its own Constitution

ZIMBABWE’S National Assembly has voted to shred the constitutional limits on President Emmerson Mnangagwa's time in office, passing the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill — known as CAB3 — by a margin that left no room for doubt about who controls parliament: ZANU-PF. The result was emphatic. Two hundred and sixteen legislators voted in favour; only 42 voted against - comfortably clearing the two-thirds majority of 187 required under the constitution. Parliamentary Speaker Jacob Mudenda announced the figures to a chamber where police had tightened security ahead of the vote, a measure that itself spoke to the combustible…
Read More