Firefighters in Cape Town on Wednesday were battling a wildfire that broke out in Table Mountain National Park and spread overnight toward the city, local authorities said. The wildfire has burned for several days in the Newlands area, high in the mountainous slopes of the park, but strong gusting winds pushed it toward Cape Town’s … Read more
An unidentified illness has killed scores of people and infected hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has reported, with preliminary investigations tracing the outbreak to three children who in January ate a bat and died. Fifty-three people in the country’s northwest had died from the disease, out of 431 reported … Read more
A Kenyan police officer was killed in Haiti on Sunday in an operation that was part of the international effort to help combat gang violence and restore order to the Caribbean nation, officials said. It appears to be the first death of a Kenyan officer working as part of the Multinational Security Support Mission, the … Read more
The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military in the country’s calamitous civil war, signed a political charter with its allies late Saturday that aimed to establish a parallel Sudanese government in areas under their control. The paramilitaries said the agreement, which was signed in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, would pave the … Read more
Roman Catholics worldwide prayed for Pope Francis, who is hospitalized in critical condition, at Mass on Sunday after the Vatican announced that he was “not out of danger.” The 88-year-old pontiff went into the hospital on Feb. 14 with an infection that developed into pneumonia in both lungs. He had a long “asthmatic respiratory crisis” … Read more
Trump administration appointees running the main United States aid agency have in recent days fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to urgent humanitarian crises around the world, according to two U.S. officials and four recent employees of the agency. The firings add to doubts raised about whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio is … Read more
In his first interview since an armed group backed by Rwanda seized swaths of his country’s territory this year, Felix Tshisekedi, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, offered the United States and Europe a stake in his country’s vast mineral wealth, a sector currently dominated by China. Congo is considered to be among … Read more
Funds for vital health programs around the world remain frozen and their work has not been able to resume, despite a federal judge’s order that temporarily halted the Trump administration’s dismantling of the government’s main foreign aid agency. Interviews with people working on health initiatives in Africa and Asia found that parents in Kenya whose … Read more
China’s foreign minister on Thursday defended South Africa’s effort to promote solidarity, equality and sustainability at Group of 20 gatherings this year, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio boycotted the first high-level meeting in Johannesburg this week because of that focus. The Group of 20 is an annual gathering of the world’s largest economies. … Read more
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will skip a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations in Cape Town next week, according to people familiar with his plans, deepening the rift between the United States and South Africa over policies the Trump administration believes are anti-American. The decision to forgo such … Read more