Africa

A HELICOPTER pilot died in a crash while fighting wildfires in South Africa’s renowned Cape Point nature reserve Sunday, officials said.   The pilot, named as Hendrik “Bees” Marais, was among water-bombing firefighters hailed as heroes in a week-long battle against blazes raging through Cape Town’s scenic southern peninsula, AFP reported.   He died “when…

TWO civilians and a UN peacekeeper were killed on Sunday as militants attacked a barracks used by the United Nations' MINUSMA force in northern Mali, it said in a statement. "This morning around 5:40am (0540 GMT), the MINUSMA camp in Kidal suffered more than 30 rockets and shells during a complex attack," the force said…

OUTGOING Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba has been announced as the winner of the Mo Ibrahim award for African leadership - a lucrative prize worth millions of dollars.   Pohamba was announced as the winner of the award at a ceremony in Nairobi yesterday. The foundation of Mohamed “Mo” Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British former mobile communications entrepreneur and…

EXHAUSTED, hungry and cold, they have been walking for miles. What little they have is carried in plastic bags. They camp in abandoned homes, followed by stray dogs hoping to snag a morsel.   Tens of thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Kosovo have been flooding in a torrent this year to…

SOMALI militants, Al-Shabaab, detonated a car bomb in the capital Mogadishu, on Saturday, injuring two police officers, police and a spokesman for the Islamists said.   The al Qaeda-affiliated group was pushed out of Mogadishu by African peacekeeping forces in 2011 but has waged a series of gun and grenade attacks to try to overthrow…

IT seemed as if the Ebola crisis was abating. New cases were plummeting. The president lifted travel restrictions, and schools were to reopen. A local politician announced on the radio that two 21-day incubation cycles had passed with no new infections in his Freetown neighborhood. The country, many health officials said, was “on the road…

THE results of Lesotho's snap election following an alleged coup attempt last year trickled in slowly Sunday, with Prime Minister Thomas Thabane taking an early lead with nearly two thirds of the vote tallied. Saturday's parliamentary poll, which was called two years ahead of schedule, passed without incident according to observers. But hampered by manual…

SOLDIERS from Chad killed 207 Boko Haram fighters in clashes near a Nigerian town close to the border with Cameroun, Chad's army announced in a statement.   One Chadian soldier was killed and another nine were wounded in Gambaru, the scene of regular attacks by the group in recent months. There was no immediate independent…

GLOBAL human rights advocate, Amnesty International, has predicted a year of further instability across Africa in 2015, especially in the West and Central African States, which have lately been affected by terrorism and the attendant rising number of refugees.   In its annual report released on Tuesday along with forecast of human rights trends for…

TUNISIA arrested about 100 suspected Islamist militants in the last three days, some of whom were preparing attacks, officials said Tuesday, and published video footage showing evidence of an Islamic State influence on some of those detained.   According to Reuters, Tunisia is waging a campaign against hardline Islamist groups who emerged in the country during…

A VIDEO purported to be by Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked rebel group al-Shabab urged Muslims to attack shopping malls in the U.S, Canada, Britain and other Western countries.   U.S. Authorities said there was “no credible” evidence suggesting a U.S. mall attack was in the works.   The threat by the al-Qaida affiliate came in the final…

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe turned 91-years-old on Saturday showing no sign of giving up power as the West slowly eases pressure on a man who has been an international pariah for the last decade.    Mugabe, one of the Africa’s most divisive figures, is the only leader that Zimbabwe has known since independence from Britain…