Burundi has unexpectedly closed its national university in the wake of political protests against the nomination of incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza to run for a third term. Reports say the university in Bujumbura shut its doors on Thursday and sent home the students living in residence
More than half the population of rural areas worldwide do not have access to basic health care, with four in five rural Africans lacking services, the UN said Monday. In the first report of its kind, the UN’s International Labour Organisation found that the rural-urban divide was omnipresent from the richest countries down to the […]
Sudan’s government on Sunday accused peacekeepers in Darfur of killing seven civilians, disputing the UN-African Union mission’s version of events in which it said its forces had repelled two attacks by gunmen. The UN-AU Mission in Darfur (Unamid) had said 40 gunmen fired on a patrol in South Darfur’s Kass area on Thursday, before the […]
Togo’s President Faure Gnassingbe took an early lead in the first results from Saturday’s presidential vote released on Monday. Results from six of 42 voting districts showed Gnassingbe with 64 percent, ahead of 33 percent for his nearest rival, Jean-Pierre Fabre, the head of the election commission said. The rest of the votes were shared […]
European Union leaders are due to hold an emergency summit on ways to stem the number of people risking the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, the BBC reports. Draft proposals for the meeting include offering 5,000 places for resettlement for migrants “qualifying for protection” under a pilot project. More than 800 people drowned off Libya’s […]
The UN children’s agency mourned on Tuesday four staff members killed in what UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned as a “barbaric attack” in Somalia. Two of those killed in Monday’s bombing in the north-eastern town of Garowe came from Kenya, the other two from Afghanistan and Uganda. Unicef named the two Kenyans as Woki Munyui, […]
At least five people were killed Tuesday when a car bomb exploded outside a busy restaurant in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. A VOA reporter on the scene says two women were among those who died in the blast. A doctor with the city’s ambulance service, Dr. Abdulkadir Abdirahman Aden, tells VOA’s Somali Service that another […]
Militant group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for a bomb attack Monday on a United Nations bus in northern Somalia that killed at least seven people and wounded several others. Garowe, SomaliaGarowe, Somalia The U.N. Children’s Fund said four of its staff members were killed and another four were in serious condition after the blast […]
December 30, 2014, will go down in the memory of all Nigerians as the day the fine principles on which the country had hitherto built its foreign policy bit the dust. In bewilderment, we now wonder what our new foreign policy is, or would be, or if there is going to be any at all. […]
Heavyweight international powers will pressure South Sudan’s leaders to end civil war, diplomats said Thursday, with the African Union, United Nations, United States and China to kickstart stalled peace talks. Over a year of talks mediated by East Africa’s eight-country IGAD bloc have failed to make headway, with the last attempt breaking down last […]
The UN gave a third of the world’s countries a passing grade on Thursday for efforts to provide universal basic education, but said most governments had failed on a pledge made 15 years ago. In 2000, 164 countries agreed at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (Unesco) World Education Forum to […]
North Korea has accused Mexico of illegally holding one of its ships, after it ran aground last year. It said the Mu Du Bong was a legitimate commercial ship and its detention a “rampant violation” of sovereignty. But a UN expert says the ship belongs to North Korea’s Ocean Maritime Management, which is […]
Shelling and sporadic clashes struck a Palestinian refugee camp under attack by Islamic extremists in the Syrian capital on Monday, a situation that a UN official described as “beyond inhumane”. Hatem al-Dimashqi, an activist based in an area just south of Damascus, said the Yarmouk camp was under attack on Monday. Both al-Dimashqi and the […]
Rebels in Sudan’s South Kordofan said on Sunday they had captured a lorry carrying ballot boxes to polling stations for nationwide elections due next week, vowing to disrupt voting in the conflict-hit region. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army-North “ambushed and captured a vehicle loaded fully with ballot boxes” on Saturday on the road linking the
The United Nations’ Chief, Turkey Prime Minister and other world leaders on Saturday congratulated the President-elect, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, over his election victory on March 28. This is contained in a statement by the Director Media and Publicity, APC Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mallam Garba Shehu, on Saturday in Abuja. The statement said the UN Secretary […]
China and Singapore have joined Japan and South Korea in restricting flights by Thailand’s airlines as the kingdom scrambles to address “significant safety concerns” by the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The January audit in Thailand “revealed some safety concerns, primarily relating to air operator certification
At least 10 people are missing, feared dead, in Burundi after landslides which have destroyed hundreds of homes, officials say. Some 3,000 people have been left homeless, according to a BBC reporter who has been to the scene. Their houses were destroyed after mud and rocks, dislodged by the rain, plunged down the hillside. Reports […]
The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Tuesday in Juba welcomed the temporary deployment of a British Royal Air Force C-130 aircraft to South Sudan. The UNMISS said the aircraft, which arrived in Juba, on Sunday would conduct daily flights to Malakal in Upper Nile State. The Mission said the aircraft would help in […]
As the rescheduled 2015 general elections draw nearer, Global Association of WestAfrican Youths (GLOWAY) has harped on the need for Nigerian to eschew violence so that the nation can have a peaceful and credible elections poll. The group stated this on Friday in a press statement signed by its President, Baruga Abdullahi Ibrahim and made […]
The battle for Libya’s oil wealth has taken on new dimensions as rival governments lay claim to the National Oil Company, further deepening divisions in the volatile North African nation. The latest row erupted this week as UN envoy Bernardino Leon, who is mediating between Libya’s warring factions, warned the country was heading towards destruction […]
