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South Africa’s Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has been forced to postpone the unveiling of the national budget following sharp disagreements within the coalition government. Coalition partners derailed his budget after opposing his plan to raise value-added-tax (VAT), which would have seen the prices of goods go up at a time when South Africans are hard-hit […]

Grave after grave after grave in this cemetery in the eastern Tanzanian city of Morogoro has been vandalised. In some, there is a gap where a metal crucifix once stood, in others the religious symbol is bent as thieves, who were hoping sell it to scrap merchants, tried and failed to remove it. More than […]

All 80 passengers and crew on a flight which crashed and overturned while landing amid severe winter weather at Toronto Pearson Airport in Canada have survived, officials said. “We are very grateful there was no loss of life,” said Deborah Flint of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. The officials said 18 people were injured in […]

When US President Donald Trump wanted someone to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin last week to open negotiations for a potential deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war, he didn’t dispatch his secretary of state. The man he sent to the Kremlin to handle a titanic geopolitical challenge does not even have a diplomatic background. Instead […]

Argentine President Javier Milei is facing impeachment calls – and legal action accusing him of fraud – over his promotion of cryptocurrency on social media. Milei posted on X, formerly Twitter, about the $LIBRA coin on Friday, which he said would help fund small businesses and start-ups. He shared a link to buy it, causing […]

Life for Mike Elvis Tusubira, a motorcycle taxi rider with HIV in Uganda, has been turned upside down since US President Donald Trump halted foreign aid last month. Not only does the 35-year-old fear for his own survival as he takes life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs – but he says he will have to split up […]

US black nationalist leader Malcolm X was assassinated on 21 February 1965, at the age of 39. The BBC reported on the reaction in his adopted home of Harlem, New York, as thousands of people queued to pay their last respects. At a time when black civil rights leaders were preaching peaceful integration, Malcolm X’s […]

Police in South Africa are “hot on the heels” of the suspects behind the killing of Muhsin Hendricks, dubbed the world’s first openly gay imam, Deputy Justice Minister Andries Nel has said. The 57-year-old was in a car when he was shot dead in broad daylight in the coastal city of Gqeberha on Saturday. CCTV […]

Rwandan-backed M23 rebels have entered Bukavu, the second-largest city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, seizing the regional governor’s office. Some people lined the streets to clap and cheer the fighters as they marched and drove into the city centre without resistance. It is the second city after Goma to fall to the rebels […]

Detained Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye, on hunger strike for a week, has been returned to prison after being in a health clinic overnight, his allies have said. The 68-year-old was rushed to a private medical facility in a prison ambulance as his his health was deteriorating, his lawyer Erias Lukwago wrote earlier on Facebook. […]