Conakry, Guinea | AFP | President Alpha Conde of Guinea has given the green light for local elections to be held on February 4, 2018, the first such vote for the country’s 342 voting districts since 2005. Conde signed a decree released late on Monday that notified the National Independent Electoral …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | The UN warned Tuesday of a ticking time bomb of drug-resistant germs brewing in the natural environment, aided by humans dumping antibiotics and chemicals into the water and soil. If this continues, people will be at an even higher risk of contracting diseases, incurable by …

  Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh | AFP | Bangladesh doctors warned Tuesday of a sharp escalation in Rohingya children suffering from pneumonia as hundreds of thousands of refugees shiver through winter in overcrowded camps with little protection from the cold. A sudden cold snap in southeastern Bangladesh has caught refugees off guard …

Ankara, Turkey | AFP | The status of Jerusalem is a “red line” for Muslims and could even prompt Turkey to cut ties with Israel, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Tuesday, as US President Donald Trump mulled whether to recognise the city as the Israeli capital. Erdogan said Turkey, which …

Beijing, China | AFP | A senior United Nations official arrived in North Korea on Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at defusing soaring tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme. Jeffrey Feltman’s visit — the first by a UN diplomat of his rank since 2010 — comes less than a week …

Something disastrous is happening in FDC that people will only understand much later COMMENT | SSEMANDA ALLAWI | For a decade plus, Dr. Col. Kizza Besigye has been attacking and accusing president Museveni of being a dictator and a selfish individual. He has accused him of failing and using NRM as a …

Regulator says aggressive marketing and awareness would reverse the poor performance Kampala, Uganda | ISAAC KHISA | Uganda’s agriculture sector has been associated with many risks – unstable prices, drought, pests and diseases – thus hampering its growth. This prompted the government to unveil a Shs5bn Agriculture Insurance Premium Subsidy Scheme last …

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Zimbabwe’s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, called for public unity to revive the country’s sickly economy as his new cabinet took office on Monday. “I have sworn in a new cabinet just to finish the term of the former president, which is a period of six to …

Abidjan, Ivory Coast | AFP | The head of the UN’s AIDS agency on Monday urged African countries to protect young women and children who are bearing the brunt of the continent’s AIDS epidemic. A sharp rise of people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has now slowed, “but now …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Humans are poisoning their environment and themselves at an alarming rate, with pollution of the oceans, soil and air now the biggest killer, a UN conference heard Monday. Urging rapid and united action from governments, businesses and individual consumers, envoys underlined that nine million people are …