Mayor of London Sadiq Khan on Thursday urged Londoners to remain “calm and vigilant” after a woman was killed and five people injured in a city centre knife attack. Police meanwhile probed possible terrorist links following the arrest of a 19-year-old man at the scene of the incident which took …
Read More »Dubai: 275 safe after Emirates plane crash lands
Dubai, United Arab Emirates | AFP | An Emirates plane with 275 people on board was involved in an accident on landing Wednesday at Dubai airport but all the passengers were evacuated safely, the government said. Footage on social media showed smoke billowing from the aircraft. “An Emirates plane coming …
Read More »Egyptian Nobel prize winning chemist Zewail dies aged 70
Cairo, Egypt | AFP | Nobel prize-winning Egyptian chemist Ahmad Zewail, who served as a science and technology advisor to US President Barack Obama, died Tuesday in the United States at the age of 70, Egypt’s presidency announced. Zewail, a naturalised US citizen, won the Nobel prize for chemistry in …
Read More »EU, EAC trade conundrum
Barely eight weeks to the October 01 deadline for the East African Community (EAC) to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU), one would expect the regional bloc to be handling the issue with a degree of urgency. Apart from Kenya, the rest of the member …
Read More »Pope names historic female deacons commission
Pope Francis on Tuesday appointed a commission to study the issue of female Church deacons in a move seen as a potential first step towards women entering the Catholic clergy. The 13-member commission, made up of seven men and six women, will examine the question with a particular focus on …
Read More »US launches first anti-IS air raids in Libya’s Sirte
Tripoli, Libya | AFP | US warplanes Monday carried out air strikes on positions of the Islamic State jihadist group in its Libyan stronghold of Sirte for the first time, the country’s unity government announced. “The first American air strikes on precise positions of the Daesh (IS) organisation were carried …
Read More »Muslims pray with Catholics over priest’s ‘barbaric’ murder
Rouen, France | AFP | Muslims attended Catholic mass in churches around France on Sunday in solidarity and sorrow following the brutal jihadist murder of a priest, the latest in a string of attacks. More than 100 Muslims were among the 2,000 faithful who packed the 11th-century Gothic cathedral of …
Read More »Turkey dismisses 1,400 troops as Erdogan tightens grip
Ankara, Turkey | AFP | Turkey’s government on Sunday dismissed nearly 1,400 military personnel, including a top aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the latest round of a sweeping purge following a failed coup. The announcement in the official gazette came as Erdogan sought to tighten his grip over …
Read More »France church attackers ‘smiled’ and spoke of Koran
One of the jihadists who murdered an elderly French priest smiled as he carried out the attack, and nuns who witnessed the grisly murder said the killers spoke about the Koran. The two nuns who were in the church when Father Jacques Hamel was killed, his throat slit on the …
Read More »Turkey widens post-coup crackdown to businessmen
Turkish authorities on Friday widened their post-coup crackdown to the business sector, detaining three top tycoons as part of investigations into the activities of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen. Twenty-one journalists also appeared in an Istanbul court after being rounded up in the sweeping purge, which has seen almost 16,000 people …
Read More »