NEWS

By Natasha Booty BBC News Some 170 people including women and children have been “executed” in attacks on three villages in Burkina Faso, a public prosecutor has said. Aly Benjamin Coulibaly appealed for witnesses to help find those who attacked Komsilga, Nordin and Soro. Separately, the army warned of the increased risk of attacks by Islamists, “including attacks on urban ...

Source: https://bbc.com/africalive The United States has said it is “deeply troubled” by the passing in Ghana of a stringent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, which it says threatens constitutional freedoms. “The bill would also undermine Ghana’s valuable public health, media and civic spaces, and economy,” the US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement. It has called for the “review of ...

Makuochi Okafor BBC News At least 17 schoolchildren across five schools in Nigeria’s north-eastern Yobe state have died after an outbreak of meningitis, authorities have confirmed. Among the deceased are students in primary schools and others in boarding secondary schools, the state commissioner for education, Mohammed Sani-Idris, told the BBC. A total of 473 suspected cases have been recorded so ...

By Kelly Ng  BBC News, Singapore A deadly stampede outside a passport office that took two lives and unending lines outside embassies – these are just some examples of what has been happening in Myanmar since the announcement of mandatory conscription into the military.  Myanmar’s military government is facing increasingly effective opposition to its rule and has lost large areas ...

By Kayla Epstein BBC News A ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos are considered children, and that a person could be held liable for accidentally destroying them, has opened up a new front in the US battle over reproductive medicine. The decision has thrown the future of IVF treatments in the state into doubt, with a host ...

By Kyle Zeeman BBC News, Johannesburg A 13-year-old school boy in South Africa, arrested after allegedly shooting and injuring his principal, may be tried as an adult, the prosecuting authority says. The boy, who has not been named, has been charged with attempted murder. His alleged 51-year-old victim is currently recovering in intensive care in hospital. The shooting has shocked ...

By Frances Mao BBC News South Korea’s government has ordered more than 1,000 junior doctors to return to work after many staged walk-outs in protest of plans to increase the number of doctors in the system. More than 6,000 interns and residents had resigned on Monday, said officials. South Korea has one of the lowest doctor-per-patient ratios among OECD countries ...

By Tiffanie Turnbull & Kelly Ng in Sydney and Singapore At least 64 people have died in an ambush in Papua New Guinea’s remote Highlands region. The victims were shot dead during a tribal dispute in the Enga province over the weekend, a national police spokesman told the BBC. The Highlands area has long struggled with violence, but these killings ...

By Nadine Yousif & Mike Wendling BBC News One person has died and 21 people were wounded in a shooting in Missouri at the end of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade. Officials said they treated eight victims who were in immediately life-threatening condition and seven others who had suffered injuries that could prove life-threatening. Nine children were ...

By Mansur Abubakar BBC News, Abuja As the rising cost of living continues to bite, many in northern Nigeria are turning to rice grains that millers once either normally rejected after processing or sold to farmers to feed their fish.  These are referred to in the Hausa language, widely spoken in the north, as afafata, which means “battling” because they ...