Features

Paris, France | AFP | From legendary British singer David Bowie to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and American boxer Muhammad Ali, here are some of the notable figures who died in 2016. – January – – 5: PIERRE BOULEZ, 90, French conductor-composer. – 7: ANDRE COURREGES, 92 French fashion designer …

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil | AFP |  Monday nights feel like Saturdays in Rio’s Little Africa neighborhood when the sun sets and the samba starts to play. Surrounded by a mostly young crowd, seven musicians sit around a table with the small four-string guitar called a cavaquinho, the cuica drum …

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 …

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 …

Stephanie Rivoal, the new French Ambassador to Uganda presented her credentials to President Yoweri Museveni on Oct. 21. She later spoke to the press at her residence in Nakasero on Nov. 18 about France’s ties with Uganda. This is Rivoal’s first posting as a diplomat and, she says, it is …

Paris, France | AFP | Wild giraffe numbers have plummeted by 40 percent in the last three decades, and the species is now “vulnerable” to extinction, a top conservation body warned Thursday. The population of the world’s tallest land mammal dropped to below 100,000 in 2015, mainly due to shrinking …

Gambia’s newly elected president has vowed to free all political prisoners and urged exiles who fled the 22-year reign of Yahya Jammeh to return from abroad and help him reform the tiny West African country, writes Carley Petesch “A new Gambia is born,” Adama Barrow said in an interview with …

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. …

By Susan Babijja AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) combines efforts with the ministry of health in the fight against HIV in Rwanda as well as controlling new infection that is becoming a challenge. Every 1st of December Rwanda joins the rest of the world in observing the World AIDS day. On …

Washington, United States | AFP |  The US administration-in-waiting nominated by President-elect Donald Trump is a circle of multimillionaire businessmen and women the public may view as a cabinet whose wealth is unprecedented in US history. Himself a billionaire real estate developer, Trump could entrench this characteristic should he choose …