Spartan Echo

    DURBAN, South Africa (AP) — Leaders of the five BRICS nations fueling global economic growth agreed Wednesday to create a development bank to help fund their $4.5 trillion infrastructure programs — a direct challenge to the World Bank that they accuse of Western bias. Few details and no figures were given, indicating that [...]

  LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was just 10 years old when she first read Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking novel “Things Fall Apart.” She devoured the rich use of Igbo proverbs in his book, which forever changed Africa’s portrayal in literature. That inspiration carried over into the creation of a pivotal character [...]

  THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Rwandan-born warlord Bosco Ntaganda was taken into custody by the International Criminal Court on Friday, March 22, after giving himself up in the African country earlier this week and was being flown to The Hague to stand trial on charges of overseeing atrocities in eastern Congo a decade ago. The [...]

  HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe police arrested the country’s most prominent rights lawyer and four senior officials with the prime minister’s party on Sunday, March 17, a day after the nation voted in a referendum on a new constitution that calls for more protection against human rights violations. Rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa is being charged [...]

  CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing a motorized rickshaw on Sunday, March 17, and then hung them by their feet while some in a watching crowd chanted “kill them!” Both men died, security officials said. The killings come a week after the attorney general’s office encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers [...]

  THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A defense lawyer for President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya told judges at the International Criminal Court on Monday, March 18,  that prosecutors should drop their case charging him with orchestrating post-election violence in Kenya in 2007 and 2008 for lack of evidence. The legal battle in The Hague came [...]

  JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Forensic scientists on Tuesday, March 12, exhumed two bodies believed to belong to young activists last seen 24 years ago at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as police said they have opened a new murder investigation. The case reopens a dark chapter in the life of the then-wife of Nelson Mandela. Many [...]

  NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The charges Uhuru Kenyatta faces at the International Criminal Court would have crippled a U.S. or European politician. Instead, the accusations that he orchestrated murder and rape in Kenya’s 2007-08 postelection chaos, along with a cold shoulder from the West, may have helped propel Kenyatta to Kenya’s presidency. Kenyatta on [...]

  KANO, Nigeria (AP) — A video posted online appears to show the corpses of some of the seven foreign hostages abducted by Islamic extremists in northern Nigeria and later killed, a gruesome warning of the growing dangers in the region. The video, viewed by The Associated Press on Monday, March 11, matched still images released [...]

  GOMA, Congo (AP) — A peace agreement between the Congolese government and the M23 rebel group remains uncertain just days before a negotiation deadline expires, Congo’s government spokesman said Monday, March 11, as fighting continued in the country’s troubled east. The rebel group believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, overran the major, eastern city [...]

    ABEOKUTA, Nigeria (AP) — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday, February 26, that Nigeria must do more to alleviate the extreme poverty across the nation’s predominantly Muslim north in order to halt the wave of bombings, shootings and kidnappings by Islamic extremists there. Clinton’s comment comes as Islamic terror groups have claimed the [...]