NEWS ANALYSIS

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  The only hint that something extraordinary lay inside the plain wooden drawer in an unassuming office behind Nairobi National Museum was a handwritten note stuck to the front: “Pull Carefully”. Inside, a monstrous jawbone with colossal fangs grinned from a bed of tattered foam — the …

Des Moines, United States | AFP | Deep-fried corn dogs, a blistering summer sun, and discerning American voters greet the presidential candidates at Iowa’s state fair, a must stop on the early road to the White House. Two dozen candidates — 23 Democrats and a longshot Republican primary challenger to President …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | Niko Kovac’s Bayern Munich launch their 2019/20 season as German Cup title holders in the first round this weekend, but the traditional season curtain-raiser will be overshadowed this year by a string of scandals rocking football in Germany. While coaching prodigies Julian Nagelsmann and David Wagner …

Freetown, Sierra Leone | AFP |  Wearing a fading Mickey Mouse T-shirt, her knees hugged to her chest, eight-year-old Musu Kamara sits in a corrugated shack in Sierra Leone’s capital waiting for her initiation into a secret society. Kamara will leave for two weeks in the bush with a sisterhood called …

Toronto, Canada | AFP |  Serena Williams and Japan’s Naomi Osaka booked a rematch of last year’s US Open final in the WTA Toronto quarter-finals after straight-set triumphs Thursday. Reigning US and Australian Open champion Osaka broke at love in the final game to defeat Polish teen Iga Swiatek 7-6 (7/4), …

London, United Kingdom | AFP | Premier League clubs splashed out well over £1 billion ($1.2 billion) in the transfer market arms race ahead of the start of the new season on Friday. The vast majority of that sum was again spent by ‘top six’ powerhouses Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea, …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | Humanity faces increasingly painful trade-offs between food security and rising temperatures within decades unless it curbs emissions and stops unsustainable farming and deforestation, a landmark climate assessment said Thursday. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that efforts to limit global warming while feeding …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | Twenty years ago on Friday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. The departing Yeltsin was casting around for a successor and few could have …

Dhaka, Bangladesh | AFP |  Five-year-old Mohammad Ahnaf lies in a makeshift bed in the balcony of a major hospital in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, fighting for his life as dengue fever ravages his little body. But his mother Shimul Akhter knows he is one of the lucky ones as Bangladesh grapples …

El Paso, United States | AFP |  Trump consoled victims of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas on Wednesday, but despite promising a message of unity, he continued to rail at opponents while facing protests that his rhetoric on race has fueled extremism. Trump flew to El Paso, Texas, where a …