Istanbul, Turkey | AFP |  It had seemed impossible to find insults more scathing. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan of trading oil with Islamic State jihadists and making modern Turkey’s founder Ataturk “roll in his grave”. In a loud slanging match between two masters of …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | The fall of Aleppo has unleashed a mixture of outrage and impotence in the West, in which fury at the relentless carnage has mingled with guilt over the failure to stop it. Even the European public — who marched in the millions over the siege …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP |  Burundi’s foreign minister on Thursday summoned envoys for the EU and several European nations to rap them over the knuckles for skipping a diplomatic meeting he had invited them to, government sources said. Ambassadors for the EU, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands had been …

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania | AFP |  Tanzanian authorities on Friday charged the editor of a whistle-blowing website for failing to reveal the identity of contributors to the site, court documents revealed. Maxence Melo, who co-founded the website Jamii Forums, was charged with operating a website without a local domain, …

Pretoria, South Africa | AFP | After 52 years, Mncedisi Tyopo finally stood beside his father’s grave, looking down at remains being exhumed as part of South Africa’s attempts to come to terms with its painful past. Tyopo’s father Bhonase Vulindlela was an anti-apartheid fighter who was hanged along with …

Madrid, Spain | AFP |  A Spanish university chancellor who’s institution developed a system to catch plagiarists was forced to quit his post on a national education commission on Thursday — having been accused of plagiarism. Head of the King Juan Carlos University in Madrid since 2013, Fernando Suarez has …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Groundwater resources could be depleted in the next few decades in dry areas of the world where people use lots of water for drinking and irrigating crops, researchers said Thursday. The research was presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in …

Ottawa, Canada | AFP | Once the world’s top producer of asbestos, Canada said Thursday it will ban the heat-resistant fibrous mineral that is woven into building and other materials but which has been found to cause cancer. In a statement, government ministers of health, science and the environment said …

Washington, United States | AFP | The massive hack affecting a billion Yahoo users shows how seemingly innocuous bits of data gleaned from cyber attacks can be exploited for profit — and potentially for espionage and information warfare. The latest breach disclosed Wednesday is the largest on record and comes …

Kampala, Uganda | AFP |  Ugandan police on Thursday arrested the prime minister of the traditional Rwenzururu kingdom, whose monarch is facing treason charges for allegedly seeking to overthrow the government, police said. Police spokesman Suwed Manshur said that the king’s number two, Johnson Thembo Kitsumbire “was arrested this afternoon …