The U.S. Marines, with more than a decade of experience with counterinsurgency (COIN) in Iraq and Afghanistan, could prove to be an important asset in working to contain and eventually defeat the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram, reports the Marine Corps Times.
Emails obtained by the Associated Press show discussions among the senior administrators of the World Health Organization from as early as June 2014, in which officials refused to yet declare a state of emergency in west Africa over the Ebola outbreak for fear of angering local governments and interfering with the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
An elder Nigerian woman kidnapped by Boko Haram claims to have been told in captivity where the terrorist group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, is hiding, and where the group has hidden the more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno kidnapped in April 2014.
Over the weekend, Egypt unveiled plans to build a wholly new capital. The new city would lie somewhere to Cairo’s east, closer to the Red Sea. It would sprawl across some 150 square miles and potentially be home to as many as 7 million people. Projected to cost $45 billion, it was announced at a summit in the seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh aimed at boosting the country’s flagging economy.
(Reuters) – Cattle herders killed 82 people and wounded 25 in a village in central Nigeria over grazing rights, police said on Tuesday, less than two weeks before a national election in which political and ethnic tensions are running high.
Reports surfaced this weekend that eleven U.S. health workers in Sierra Leone are being flown home after being exposed to the deadly Ebola virus, the largest such group repatriated. The news arrives amid a political tempest that has the Vice President of that nation demanding asylum in the United States after being expelled from office while under Ebola quarantine.
The French defense ministry unveiled France’s 2015 defense strategy last week, which was revised following the terrorist attacks in Paris and the Islamic extremist threat stemming from Africa, reports Vice News.
Nigerian troops reported this week that they discovered a facility they are describing as a “bomb factory” run by the radical Islamic group Boko Haram in northeast Borno state.
A man in Malawi was arrested this week for attempting to murder a 16-year-old albino boy. Authorities say attacks against people with albinism have risen in the past year, as witch doctors claim potions made with the body parts of albinos can change the fate of those willing to pay to kill them.
Dogs, bees, rats, and even dolphins and sea lions have been used to help sniff out explosives throughout most of the world. Recently, elephants have been added to that list as researchers in South Africa have teamed up with the U.S. Army to train these massive yet gentle mammals help them detect TNT; a common explosive material found in land mines.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Two men, one armed with a gun, were caught on camera late on Tuesday mugging a South African journalist as he prepared for a live television report on Zambian President Edgar Lungu’s hospital treatment.
Zambia’s president collapsed while making a speech and was diagnosed with malaria, officials said on Sunday.
Saturday demonstrators gathered at the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters and marched to skid row to protest the fatal shooting of a troubled homeless man killed during a tussle with police officers.
Maiduguri, Nigeria, the capital of Borno State, faced at least five suicide bombings in four areas on Saturday, which left over 50 people dead and 139 injured. Authorities reported at least one suicide bomber was a female. The country rescheduled its February 14 presidential election to March due to violence.
A mob in the northeastern city of Bauchi, Nigeria, beat a woman to death and set her on fire after vigilantes aroused suspicion that she was a Boko Haram-affiliated suicide bomber. The woman was found to have no association to terrorism, her erratic behavior explained by a history of mental illness.
The Islamist terror group Boko Haram has taken control of a territory in Nigeria the size of Ireland. It continues its efforts to expand within the west African nation and establish an Islamist Caliphate, now with the support of the Middle Eastern Islamic State (ISIS) terror group. While headlines are quick to mention the dead, it is Nigeria’s internally displaced, now numbering upwards of one million, who continue to suffer as they flee the group.
The degree of coordination between Nigerian terror gang Boko Haram and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been a topic of much speculation among counterterrorism analysts. It has long been a matter of record that Boko Haram idolized ISIS and sought to emulate their ideology and tactics, creating a “caliphate” of their own in Africa.
Samuel Sam-Sumana, the vice president of Sierra Leone, has imposed an Ebola quarantine on himself following the death of his bodyguard upon contracting the lethal virus.
(AFP) Zambia’s top prosecutor on Friday stunned a magistrate when he refused to prosecute himself on charges of abuse of office and declared himself a free man.
Some good news came out of Nigeria over the weekend, as Boko Haram was pushed out of Baga, a town on Lake Chad where an estimated 2,000 were slaughtered by the terrorist gang last month.
If the Obama Administration is serious about making progress in defense of America’s best interests, the President and his national security team will forthwith request resources from Congress to rid Nigeria of the scourge called Boko Haram, while also swiftly implementing a robust plan to crush the Islamic State, what remains of Al Qaeda, and other adherents of radical Islamist jihad.
Drug-resistant malaria has been detected at the Myanmar-India border and now poses an “enormous threat” to global health, scientists have said.
A man claiming to be the leader of Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, appears in a new video threatening violence against the Nigerian government should they proceed with presidential elections, and warning that the terrorist group will “enslave” all those “supporters of Francois Hollande and Obama.”
As the number of cases of Ebola begin to rise for the first time in 2015, a new audit has uncovered more than $3 million in funding to fight Ebola in Sierra Leone is wholly unaccounted for. The government has vowed a prompt investigation as it begins to quarantine previously untouched neighborhoods in the capital, Freetown.
A report by Tim Mak at The Daily Beast has U.S. intelligence officials confirming that there are, indeed, concrete ties between the Islamic State and Nigerian jihadist terror group Boko Haram.
The Nigerian jihadist terror group Boko Haram has staged what is believed to be its first deadly attack on the nation of Chad, crossing the Nigerian border overnight and killing a number of soldiers. Their passage across Lake Chad from Nigeria follows a deadly female suicide bombing in northeast Borno.
Darfur may not be in the public eye as it was when every liberal arts student donned a “Save Darfur” shirt, when world powers issued public condemnations, and “Rock for Darfur” performers raised tens of thousands in donations annually (there were 22 concerts in 2006 alone).
In a meeting with representatives of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) on Saturday, Pope Francis reminded his hearers that the future is in the hands of the young, who need to be protected from “new and unscrupulous forms of colonization,” such as the reckless pursuit of riches, as well as “fundamentalism and the distorted use of religion.”
According to a new survey even the most poor and volatile regions of Africa have higher immunization rates than the USA or Canada.
Boko Haram announced the terrorist group will target polling units during the Nigerian elections on February 14. Despite the threat, the National Association of Istekiri Graduates (NAIG) said postponing the elections would be “disastrous.”
The Boko Haram crisis in northern Nigeria continues to rage. On Wednesday, Boko Haram staged a major counter-attack against Cameroon– one of the nations leading an African Union coalition against the terrorist group– launching a bloody rampage through the border town of Fotokol that killed at least 91 villages and wounded over 500, according to the Associated Press.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea rose last week for the first time in several weeks.
After West Africans suffered from nearly 22,000 infections and 9,000 casualties, physicians began large-scale human testing of two potential Ebola vaccines on Monday.
Nigerian troops repelled an assault by the Boko Haram jihadist group on the key city of Maiduguri, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reports.
The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit.
EMBO Molecular Medicine released a study that claims insectivorous free-tailed bats sparked the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
In Papua New Guinea, four women have been accused by other villagers of practicing black magic and may face an excruciating death, along with their thirteen children and grandchildren.
