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The Trump administration on Thursday said import taxes on coffee and bananas will be lowered as part of trade deals with four Latin American countries. The agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador come as US President Donald Trump faces scrutiny over his handling of the economy and concerns about affordability. As part of […]

The Nigerian government has announced it is cancelling a controversial policy that mandated the use of indigenous languages for teaching in the earliest years of schooling instead of English. Education Minister Tunji Alausa said the programme, introduced just three years ago, had failed to deliver and was being scrapped with immediate effect. Instead, English will […]

A court in Gabon has sentenced the former first lady and the son of deposed President Ali Bongo to 20 years in jail following a two-day trial. On Tuesday night, Sylvia Bongo and Noureddin Bongo were found guilty of embezzlement and corruption after a trial that began a day earlier. They were not present. They […]

Almost a year to the day since French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal was arrested on arrival at Algiers airport, the Algerian presidency has granted him a pardon and allowed him to leave the country. Sansal, 81, has been at the centre of a bitter diplomatic row between Paris and Algiers and President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s decision came […]

At least six people have died during a crowd crush at a military recruitment event in a stadium in Ghana. Wednesday’s “tragic” crush appeared to have been caused by “an unexpected surge of applicants who breached security protocols and rushed into the gates,” said a statement from Ghana’s armed forces. Twenty-two others were injured, including […]

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa says “boycott politics doesn’t work” as he hit back at US President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg later this month. Trump has said that no US official would attend the gathering over widely discredited claims that white people are being persecuted in South Africa. […]

Ariana Grande has said her new darker hair is not about saying goodbye to her Wicked character Glinda, but rather a way of “doing something different”. The singer and actress, 32, has recently swapped her signature, Glinda-era blonde locks with a brunette tone, sending fans wild on social media. It comes as she resumes her […]

Syria will join the international coalition to combat the Islamic State group, marking a shift in US foreign policy in the Middle East, a senior Trump administration official has confirmed. The announcement came as President Donald Trump met Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House – the first such visit from a Syrian leader […]

Monday evening was busy as usual near the Red Fort metro station in India’s capital Delhi when the sound of a loud blast broke through the cacophony on the streets. An explosion in a car killed at least eight people and injured more than 20. It was so powerful that several vehicles nearby almost melted, […]

The US Senate has passed a crucial funding bill that could bring the longest government shutdown in history to an end within days. The bill passed in a 60-40 vote late on Monday, with nearly all Republicans joining eight Democrats who splintered from the party to approve it. The deal funds the government until the […]