WORLD

Dakar – A desert warfare specialist, Chad’s Hissene Habre seized power in 1982 and quickly embraced the role of ruthless dictator, with brutal atrocities the hallmark of his eight-year reign of terror. Often dressed in combat fatigues that complemented his “desert fighter” nickname, Habre fled to Senegal after he was ousted by current Chadian President Idriss Deby in 1990. Habre ...

Nairobi- Kenya’s opposition lined up Thursday behind a single candidate, veteran political leader Raila Odinga, strengthening their challenge to the government in August’s polls. Former prime minister Odinga, 72, was named presidential candidate by senior leaders of the National Super Alliance (NASA) at a large rally in the capital Nairobi. Odinga will, for the second consecutive time, challenge President Uhuru ...

Vatican City – Pope Francis is brushing off security concerns to forge ahead on Friday with a two-day trip to Egypt aimed at presenting a united Christian-Muslim front that repudiates violence committed in God’s name. Three weeks after Islamic militants staged twin Palm Sunday church attacks, Francis is expected to land in Cairo in the early afternoon for a series ...

Dakar – Souleymane Guengueng was barely able to walk or see when the prison doors swung open and he and hundreds of others were released in Chad in 1990 after dictator Hissene Habre fled. He then began collecting accounts of torture. A quarter-century later, those accounts helped convict and uphold a life sentence for Habre in a landmark trial that ...

New York – The UN Security Council on Thursday postponed voting on a draft resolution on the Western Sahara conflict amid signs the Polisario Front independence movement was preparing a pullback from a tense zone of the contested territory, a council diplomat has said. The US-drafted text included a strong appeal to the Polisario Front to immediately withdraw from the ...

Tanzanian President John Magufuli has sacked nearly 10,000 civil servants for having fake education certificates. He was responding to the release of a government report into fraudulent qualifications in the public sector. The education minister said that some had been using their relatives’ school certificates, while others did not appear on official records at all. President Magufuli has given those ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says some British people have “illusions” about discussing the UK’s future ties with the EU at the same time as nailing down the UK’s Brexit terms. The future relationship can only be discussed once the exit issues – such as UK payments to the EU budget – are resolved, she told German MPs. On the sequence ...

The US is to tighten sanctions on North Korea and step up diplomatic moves aimed at pressuring the country to end its nuclear and missile programmes. President Donald Trump’s strategy was announced after a special briefing for all 100 US senators. Earlier, the top US commander in the Pacific defended the deployment of an advanced missile defence system in South ...

Abuja – Nigeria’s ex-president Goodluck Jonathan’s former doctor has been charged with six counts of money laundering, the country’s anti-corruption agency says. Fortunate Fiberesima, who worked as Jonathan’s personal physician in 2012, is accused of awarding contracts to companies in which he had a personal interest, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said. Fiberesima, former head of the State ...

Nairobi – A spokesperson for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders says 25 000 people have been displaced by fighting in the South Sudan town of Kodok. The top United Nations official in South Sudan also warned of a government offensive on the town. Phillippe Carr said that the fighting had caused a reduction in humanitarian services and there was ...