News

The former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was once described as the world’s most powerful woman. Here she talks to the BBC’s Katya Adler about Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat – and how she handled Donald Trump. Angela Merkel led Germany for 16 years. She was there during the financial crisis, the 2015 migrant crisis and, […]

At least one person has died and three others have been injured after a cargo plane crashed near Vilnius airport in Lithuania in the early hours of Monday. A search is currently under way for a fourth person. The plane, operated for DHL by the Spanish cargo airline Swiftair, crashed near a house as it […]

The renowned anti-apartheid writer and activist Breyten Breytenbach, jailed for his beliefs in South Africa in the 1970s, has died aged 85, his family said. He passed away in his sleep, with his wife Yolande by his side in Paris. The dissident poet, novelist and painter was “an immense artist, militant against apartheid, he fought […]

Chioma is adamant that Hope, the baby boy she is holding in her arms, is her son.  After eight years of failed attempts to conceive, she sees him as her miracle baby. “I’m the owner of my baby,” she says defiantly. She’s sitting next to her husband, Ike, in the office of a Nigerian state […]

A fugitive Zambian lawmaker with a bounty on his head has been arrested in Zimbabwe, Zambian authorities have said. Emmanuel “Jay Jay” Banda, who was facing robbery charges, is accused of having escaped from custody in August as he awaited to appear in court. He is said to have escaped through a window at Chipata […]

In the afterglow of lifting her first Wimbledon trophy, wheelchair tennis player Kgothatso Montjane has revealed she was suddenly left with an “immense void” in her life. The 38-year-old says the death of her mother Margaret, from kidney complications at the end of July, had a profound impact on her mental health. “To lose a […]

Kenya’s President William Ruto has cancelled two major deals involving Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, after the tycoon was indicted for fraud by US prosecutors. In his state-of-the-nation address on Thursday, Ruto said the deals had been cancelled based on “new information provided by our investigative agencies and partner nations”. The day before, Mr Adani, India’s […]

This year’s winner of France’s biggest book prize is being sued in Algeria over claims he stole the story from a patient of his psychiatrist wife. Kamel Daoud was awarded the Goncourt prize earlier this month for his novel Houris, a searing account of Algeria’s 1990s civil war in which up to 200,000 people were […]

Regulators in South Africa have recalled a batch of the popular Yaz Plus contraceptive pill, after a packaging mix-up which means the contraception could be potentially ineffective. Manufacturer Bayer Ltd said women using pills from the affected batch should stop immediately and seek medical advice. A packaging mix-up led to a number of blister packs […]

William Ruto, who became Kenya’s president two years ago riding on the crest of the Christian vote, has been visibly shaken to find that over the last few months church leaders of all creeds are losing faith in him – seeing him less as a saviour and more as the greedy biblical tax collector. In […]