Tag Archives: politics

Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP | The Democratic Republic of Congo’s main opposition party on Saturday chose the son of its founder, a historic opposition figure, as its leader and presidential candidate in long delayed polls due at the end of the year. The Union for Democracy and Social Progress …

Harare, Zimbabwe | AFP | Illegal gold miners in Zimbabwe have seized a farm belonging to former first lady Grace Mugabe, local media reported, just four months after former President Robert Mugabe was ousted from power. Hundreds of aggressive squatters have taken over portions of Grace’s Smithfield estate in Mazowe, …

Dakar, Senegal | AFP | Leading Senegalese politician Khalifa Sall was handed a five-year jail term for fraud on Friday, a sentence that will rule him out of presidential elections due next February. Sall, 62, who is mayor of Dakar, had denied the charges against him as politically motivated. He …

Beijing, China | AFP | Beijing flexed its military muscle this week as its sole operational aircraft carrier apparently took part in a huge naval drill with dozens of other vessels in the South China Sea, satellite images showed. The pictures, taken by Planet Labs Inc., appear to show the …

Luanda, Angola | AFP | Tensions between Angola’s president and his long-serving predecessor have erupted into the open as an anti-corruption drive targets the former ruler’s family. President Joao Lourenco has pledged to crusade against entrenched state corruption and nepotism since taking over in September from Jose Eduardo dos Santos, …

Moscow, Russia | AFP | Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the actresses who have claimed sexual abuse by disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein “prostitutes” and poured scorn on journalists who have accused a Russian lawmaker of sexual harassment. Peskov, speaking to students in Moscow, said that the …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Lagos, Nigeria’s thriving economic capital, was on lockdown Thursday for President Muhammadu Buhari’s first official visit to the city as campaigning for next year’s presidential polls heats up. In front of the cameras, it was all smiles between Buhari and Bola Tinubu, a political grandee …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | A Kenyan court fined the interior minister and police chief Thursday after they defied orders to produce an opposition politician in court, who was instead deported for the second time in two months. A prominent but unelected politician with the National Super Alliance (NASA), Miguna Miguna …

Hong Kong, China | AFP | Touted as an engineering wonder, the world’s longest sea bridge, which connects Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China, includes a snaking road crossing and an underwater tunnel and reportedly uses enough steel to build 60 Eiffel Towers. Nine years after construction began on the 55-kilometre …

Monrovia, Liberia | AFP | As UN peacekeepers leave Liberia after 14 years, headway in reforming the security forces is being undermined by lack of progress in tackling the country’s traumatic legacy of war crimes, officials say. Liberia’s 1989-2003 conflict killed around a quarter of a million people, while government forces …