Detroit, United States | AFP | Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden went on the offensive Wednesday against his main 2020 opponents but was rapidly assailed on the debate stage over key issues like health care, race, immigration and criminal justice. Tensions rose rapidly between the former vice president and Senator Kamala Harris, the …
Read More »US women’s league seeks World Cup-winning bounce
New York, United States | AFP | The US women’s football team is the best on the planet, but the sport’s domestic league is virtually unknown. Players, organisers and fans hope that is about to change as the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) is looking to capitalise on the national team’s …
Read More »Nigerian women struggle to raise children born of Libya rape
Benin City, Nigeria | AFP | She was only just 18 when she gave birth without a doctor in a Tripoli apartment, gripping the hand of her best friend who had come on a journey they hoped would lead from Nigeria to Europe. For Joy, who told her story to AFP on …
Read More »Buzz kill: mass bee deaths sting Russian beekeepers
Bobrovka, Russia | AFP | Anatoly Rubtsov looked despondently at the beehives lining his property. “The farm used to be loud, it sang,” he said. Today just a faint buzz is audible but an overpowering rotting stench hung in the air after his bees were likely poisoned by a pesticide. Rubtsov, …
Read More »Equatorial Guinea’s president to mark 40 years in power
Libreville, Gabon | AFP | Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema will celebrate forty years in power on Saturday, highlighting his status as Africa’s longest-serving head of state. Since he seized control in a 1979 military coup, rights groups have described Obiang Nguema, 77, as one of the continent’s most brutal …
Read More »Sundowns title favourites amid uncertainty over coach Mosimane
Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | The 2019/2020 South African Premiership season kicks off Saturday with Mamelodi Sundowns favourites to complete a hat-trick despite uncertainty over the future of multiple title-winning coach Pitso Mosimane. He is reportedly upset that the 2016 CAF Champions League trophy-holders want to hire an unnamed Spanish …
Read More »DR Congo Ebola epidemic widens on eve of first anniversary
Goma, DR Congo | AFP | An epidemic of Ebola in eastern DR Congo sharply widened on Wednesday, the eve of the first anniversary of the outbreak, with the announcement of a death in a major city and the quarantining of 15 people in a province that had previously escaped the …
Read More »Glimmer of hope as Italy battles ‘olive tree leprosy’
GAGLIANO DEL CAPO, Italy | AFP | Working in an arid Italian field of crumbly soil, agronomists are battling a rampant bacterium that has already infected millions of olive trees and could threaten the entire Mediterranean basin. Xylella fastidiosa, which has no known cure, has devastated ancient olive trees in Italy’s …
Read More »Ghana grapples with illegal fishing as stocks dive
Accra, Ghana | AFP | Fish vendor Mercy Allotey waits at the beachfront in Ghana’s capital Accra for customers to buy the freshest catch brought in by the brightly-coloured dugout canoes plying the coast. But she complains the local fishermen are now netting less and less as a combination of illegal …
Read More »Kolkata: birthplace of the Calcutta Cup, and still India’s rugby hub
Kolkata, India | AFP | When England and Scotland play rugby each year, the winner hoists the Calcutta Cup — a relic of the sport’s roots in India, and a nod to the city where it is still thriving to this day. In the 1870s, when the Calcutta Rugby Football Club …
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