The highest point on Earth got a bit higher Tuesday as China and Nepal finally agreed on a precise elevation for Mount Everest after decades of debate. The agreed height unveiled at a joint news conference in Kathmandu of 8,848.86 metres (29,031 feet) was 86 centimetres (2.8 feet) higher than the measurement previously recognised by […]

In the crowded alleys of Bambari’s Kidjigira market, customers of all faiths brush together as steam rises from hanging cooking pots and flies swarm around them. At last, people are not afraid. Until recently, the marketplace remained a no man’s land separating the Muslim and Christian districts of Bambari, a town at the epicentre of […]

A political crisis in the perennially restive Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) deepened on Monday as lawmakers trashed parliament after President Felix Tshisekedi moved to scrap the shaky ruling coalition. Tshisekedi’s government has been in tatters with MPs loyal to his powerful predecessor Joseph Kabila, who command more than 300 seats in the 500-member […]

Lloyd Austin, who led US troops into Baghdad in 2003 and rose to head the US Central Command, has been chosen by President-elect Joe Biden to be the first African-American secretary of defence, US media reported Monday. A veteran of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the retired four-star army general, 67, beat out the favourite […]

A “champion of peace” doesn’t normally threaten to show no mercy before carrying out an attack that sparks a humanitarian crisis. Yet Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is not the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to go to war. Officially, the guns in Tigray have been silenced: On November 28, Abiy, who won the 2019 […]