WORLD

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has missed his second cabinet meeting in a row, the Premium Times newspaper reports. It says that Information Minister Lai Mohammed told reporters that the president was absent because he wanted to rest. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo chaired the meeting instead. Mr Buhari returned to Nigeria last month after being in London on sick leave for ...

China has launched a new aircraft carrier, boosting its military presence amid rising tensions in the region. It is the country’s second aircraft carrier, after the Liaoning, and the first to be made domestically. State media said the unnamed ship was “transferred from dry dock into the water” in the north east port of Dalian. Previous reports said it would ...

A Ugandan activist, arrested for calling President Yoweri Museveni a “pair of buttocks”, has been remanded in custody until next month. Stella Nyanzi’s lawyer told a packed court room in the capital Kampala that his client had been denied access to her family and legal team. Ms Nyanzi, who has been charged with cyber-harassment, says she has done nothing wrong ...

Radio France Internationale (RFI) says its correspondent in Cameroon, Ahmed Abba, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a military tribunal. He had been convicted of non-denunciation of terrorism and laundering of the proceeds of terrorist acts. Campaign groups say Mr Abba was simply reporting on the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ...

French President François Hollande has used a ceremony to honour a police officer slain in Paris last week to call for unity in the “long and difficult fight against terrorism”. He awarded Xavier Jugelé, 37, the Legion of Honour, one of France’s highest honours. The two candidates to succeed Mr Hollande, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, both attended. They ...

A least 24 people have been killed and several injured in a head-on collision between a passenger’s bus and a tanker carrying cooking oil on the road between the capital, Nairobi, and the coastal city of Mombasa. The accident occurred in the Kibwezi area shortly after midnight local time when the bus driver was trying to overtake another vehicle but ...

New York – The United Nations on Monday criticised Congolese authorities for releasing a video showing the grisly murders of two UN experts, saying the move could harm the investigation and was traumatic for the families. “The video is evidence in the crime. We don’t think it should have been released. We don’t think it should have been shown,” said ...

The authorities in Somalia have executed four men who were behind twin blasts which killed dozens of people in the south-western city of Baidoa in February 2016, military officer Major Nur Aden has said, Reuters news agency reports. The four, who were members of militant Islamist group al-Shabab, were sentenced to death in February by a military court which found ...

A pastor in Uganda has denied burning bibles, a pentecostal group has said. The National Fellowship Of Born Again Pentecostal Churches of Uganda (NFBPC) said it met Pastor Aloysious Bugingo on Sunday after becoming “greatly alarmed” by reports that he was “leading a campaign to burn Bibles”. A video emerged recently on social media of the pastor purportedly condemning the ...

Nairobi – Kenyan political parties have reportedly been given a five-day extension to nominate their candidates for the upcoming general elections in August, after a successful court ruling. According to BBC, the primaries must now be held by May 1, after a successful court challenge to extend the April 26 deadline. During the court challenge, the east African country’s political ...