AFRICA

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Olympic champions Vivian Cheruiyot and Eliud Kipchoge were named Kenya’s top athletes at an awards ceremony that rounded off a controversial but successful year for sports in the country. Cheruiyot, 33, a former world double 5,000m and 10,000m champion, warded off the challenge of Jemima …

Banjul, Gambia | AFP | Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh has ruthlessly pursued opponents real and imaginary, and implied more than once that he would kill anyone who defied him. His magnanimous concession speech and promise of a swift handover to president-elect Adama Barrow after 22 years in power has therefore …

Accra, Ghana | AFP |  Ghana is a resource-rich west African country where worries about the economy are set to dominate Wednesday’s presidential election. Major producer of cocoa, gold  Ghana is the world’s second biggest producer of cocoa after Ivory Coast and Africa’s second biggest gold producer after South Africa. …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | The last foreign reporter living in South Sudan said Wednesday he had been deported from the war-torn country after a series of articles critical of the government. In a statement posted on his Twitter account, Justin Lynch, 25, said he was “arrested and deported” by …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Tuesday overturned a ruling that granted a man the right to medically-assisted death and could have opened the way to legalise euthanasia. Last year, the High Court in Pretoria had ruled that a doctor could help retired …

Banjul, Gambia | AFP | The Gambia’s shock election result awarded president-elect Adama Barrow extra votes by mistake but a recount showed he still won outright, the country’s electoral commission told AFP Tuesday. Alieu Momar Njie, chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, said correct counting on the spot in one …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  More than 100 patients escaped from Kenya’s only psychiatric hospital on Monday as doctors and nurses joined a national hospital strike for pay rises. Nairobi Police Commander Japheth Koome told AFP that police had launched an operation to return the patients to the hospital, as …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Fraudsters posing as consular officers operated a fake American embassy in the Ghanaian capital Accra for about a decade and printed counterfeit visas, a US official said Monday. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said no one was believed to have entered the United …

Kampala, Uganda | AFP |  One of Africa’s longest-surviving rebel groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorised parts of central Africa for 30 years. Its leaders are violent pariahs and fugitives from international justice, hunted by US special forces and African armies. Founder Joseph Kony remains on the loose, …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP |  Nobel prize-winning author Wole Soyinka hit back Monday at critics from his native Nigeria, denouncing the “slugs, barbarians and imbeciles” who derided him for tearing up his US residency card after Donald Trump’s election win. “I don’t want people we fought for to have the …