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UKRAINIAN and US officials will soon meet in Switzerland to discuss Washington’s plan for ending the war with Russia, Kyiv said Saturday, as it seeks to fix the draft that heeds to some of Moscow’s hardline demands. US President Donald Trump gave Ukraine less than a week to approve the 28-point plan to end the nearly four-year conflict, which would see the invaded country cede territory, cut its army, and pledge to never join NATO. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s European allies, who were not included in drafting the agreement, said the plan requires “additional work” as they scrambled at the G20 summit…

WORLD leaders from the G20 adopted a declaration at the start of their summit in South Africa, despite opposition from the United States. The US is boycotting the two-day talks over a diplomatic rift with the host country. The Trump administration had put pressure on South Africa not to adopt a leaders’ declaration in the absence of an American delegation, South African officials said. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa responded to that earlier this week by saying “we will not be bullied.” There were no immediate details of what was in the declaration, but South Africa hailed it as a…

NIGER Republic’s president Abdourahamane Tchiani this weekend said the country’s border with Benin would remain closed “as long as the security situation does not evolve” on the Beninese side. The head of state spoke during a Saturday rally in Gaya, a town located just a few kilometres from the border. He accused Benin of hosting French troops on its territory and claimed Benin was allowing Western countries to “finance and support terrorism” in order to destabilise the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Niger’s military authorities have used similar arguments in the past but Benin keeps denying these allegations. Tchiani also…

BENJAMIN Sesko will be out of action “for a few weeks” after hurting his knee before the international break, manager Ruben Amorim said on Friday. The forward, who joined United from RB Leipzig for £74 million ($97 million) in August, was injured during the 2-2 draw at Tottenham on November 8 and missed Slovenia’s World Cup qualifiers. Amorim was initially “more concerned” about the issue due to the fact it related to a knee, but the United boss is confident the 22-year-old has avoided a lengthy lay-off. “He is going to stay out for a few weeks, I don’t know…

AT least 67 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says. Speaking during a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said the death toll includes a baby girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday. It also includes seven other children killed a day earlier, as Israel carried out a wave of attacks across the enclave. “This is during an agreed ceasefire. The pattern is staggering,”…

A UNITED States district judge has sentenced Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, a member of 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees, to 14 years in prison for illegally funnelling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former US President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Michel declined to address the court before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him on Thursday. The trial in Washington, DC, included testimony from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio. This week’s sentencing came after a federal jury convicted Michel on 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, in April…

SOUTH Africa has classified violence against women a national disaster following an online campaign culminating in countrywide protests on Friday. Women were urged to “withdraw from the economy for one day”, and lie down for 15 minutes at 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) in honour of the 15 females who are murdered in the country every day. The state had refused to make the categorisation but changed tack after “evaluating the persistent and immediate life-safety risks posed by ongoing acts of violence”. South Africa experiences some of the world’s highest levels of gender-based violence (GBV), with the rate at which…

QATARI Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), days after the government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group signed a framework agreement for a peace deal aimed at ending fighting in the country’s east. On his first trip to the African country, the Qatari leader was welcomed in the capital Kinshasa on Friday by DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and other officials. The frameworkd agreement was the latest in a series of documents signed in recent months as part of efforts, backed by the United States and Qatar, to end decades of fighting…

FOR Palestinians held within Israel’s prison network, torture, abuse and contempt for life isn’t just the norm, it’s the system. That’s according to report released this week [PDF] by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI). In the report, PHRI reveals the details of at least 94 Palestinian prisoners killed while in Israeli detention. The true number is likely far higher, the report’s authors concede. All of those killed died from either torture, assault, wilful medical neglect or malnutrition. The report builds upon a tranche of evidence of abuse and torture published by a variety of human rights organisations, both…

A FLORIDA congresswoman has been charged with stealing $5m (£3.8m) in federal disaster funds. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is accused of laundering some of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) money into her 2021 election campaign. The 46-year-old Democrat is under investigation by the House of Representatives Ethics Committee and could be expelled from the chamber. Attorney General Pam Bondi called it a “particularly selfish, cynical crime”. In a statement, Ms Cherfilus-McCormick – who was elected to Congress in 2022 – maintained she was innocent and vowed to clear her name. She faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted. The…

THE UN human rights council has given unanimous backing to a fresh, independent investigation into mass killings reported in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher. “Our wake-up calls were not heeded. Bloodstains on the ground in el-Fasher have been photographed from space. The stain on the record of the international community is less visible, but no less damaging,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk said at an emergency meeting in Geneva on Friday. Since the civil war began over two years ago, more than 150,000 people have been killed and about 12 million have been forced from their homes. The new…

TWELVE historical artefacts have been formally returned to Ethiopia after being kept by a German family for more than 100 years. The artefacts, originally collected in the 1920s by Germany’s then-envoy to Ethiopia Franz Weiss and his wife Hedwig, were handed over on Wednesday to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University. The collection included crowns, shields and paintings, all considered culturally and historically significant in Ethiopia. “The artefacts still stand as a symbol of the long-standing and friendly relationship between Germany and Ethiopia,” said Ferdinand von Weyhe, Germany’s envoy to Ethiopia. Professor Ramon Wyss, whose father was…

SUPER Falcons’ Chiamaka Nnadozie, has won the CAF Goalkeeeper of the Year prize for the third time in a row, writing her name in African football folkore. Nnadozie claimed the prize at the 2025 CAF Awards in Morocco on Wednesday, adding to her wins in 2023 and 2024. The Brighton goalkeeper played all games as the Super Falcons won a 10th Women Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) crown earlier in the year. She edged Morocco’s Khadija Er-Rmichi and South African goalkeeper, Andile Dlamini, to get the honour at the event in Rabat. After picking the prize, Nnadozie thanked the Confederation…

AT least one Palestinian has been killed and two others, a woman and her child – injured in Israeli attacks on southern Gaza, according to the Wafa news agency and a medical source. The killing came on Wednesday in the Qizan an-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis, a source from the city’s Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera. Earlier, a woman and her child were gravely injured in a drone attack on the southern town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis. They add to 279 killings and more than 650 injuries in nearly 400 Israeli violations recorded by the enclave’s…

PRIME Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday said Spain would investigate Facebook owner Meta for allegedly violating millions of users’ privacy, summoning the US tech giant to answer before parliament. An investigation by Spanish, Belgian and Dutch experts found that Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, used a “hidden mechanism” for almost a year to track the internet activity of Android device users, Sanchez’s office said in a statement. Data was allegedly collected about the web pages users visited on browsers and was then linked to their identity on Facebook and Instagram apps, even when internet surfers were in incognito…

THE Kenyan authorities paid a network of trolls to threaten and intimidate young protesters during recent anti-government demonstrations, Amnesty International has said. A new report by the human rights organisation said government agencies also employed surveillance and disinformation to target organisers of the mass protests, which swept Kenya across 2024 and 2025. The demonstrations were driven largely by “Gen Z” activists who used social media platforms to mobilise. In response to Amnesty’s report, Kenya’s interior minister said the government “does not sanction harassment or violence against any citizen”. But Amnesty said it had uncovered a campaign to “silence and suppress”…

TANZANIA’s image for stability has been “stained” by the unrest that hit the East African nation during last month’s heavily disputed elections, President Samia Suluhu Hassan has acknowledged. Speaking as she swore in her new cabinet, Samia warned that the violence could “set the country back”. “We mostly depend on loans from international creditors, but what happened eroded our global credibility,” the 65-year-old president said. She was declared the winner of October’s presidential poll with 98% of the vote, but the opposition – which was barred from contesting – denounced the election as a “mockery of democracy”. Lazarus Chakwera, Malawi’s…

ARSENAL are set to discover the full extent of the thigh injury suffered by Gabriel while on international duty amid concerns he faces several weeks out. The centre-back limped off in visible discomfort during Brazil’s friendly against Senegal at Emirates Stadium over the weekend and has returned to Arsenal for treatment. The early fears are that the 27-year-old will miss a minimum of four weeks, with sources indicating the defender’s absence could stretch to January. The exact severity of the injury, and the timescale for recovery, will be finalised in the coming days, with Gabriel undergoing further assessment. His absence…

HAMAS and other Palestinian factions in Gaza have rejected a United Nations Security Council resolution that establishes a governing board and an international stabilisation force to take over the Israeli-besieged enclave. In a joint statement released on Tuesday, Hamas and other factions in Gaza said the United States-led effort will act as a framework “that paves the way for field arrangements imposed outside the Palestinian national will”. They said that in its current proposed form, the international military force to be deployed in Gaza “will turn into a type of imposed guardianship or administration – reproducing a reality that restricts…

PRESIDENT Donald Trump on Tuesday angrily dismissed a question about the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, claiming the Saudi dissident journalist was “extremely controversial” and insisting the subject was only raised during his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to embarrass his visitor. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you liked him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he presided over a pageant-filled visit for the de facto Saudi leader. Trump went on to insist Prince bin…