Some people travel the world to surf, to hike, to visit art museums or dine at Michelin-starred restaurants. Baz Dreisinger goes to prisons. Dreisinger, an associate professor of English at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, spent two years on a pilgrimage to prisons in nine...
The 6-year-old girl was striking, so beautiful that one of the South Sudanese government soldiers who attacked her village near Bentiu in Unity State singled her out. He would abduct her, the way so many other Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army soldiers were grabbing girls as sex slaves, locking...
The targeting crosshairs are focused on a dark building, tucked in the trees, when a missile dropped from the wings streaks down and the suspected terrorist base explodes in a fireball. The grainy video might appear to be another U.S. drone strike, but this was a Nigerian military crew operating...
Even by African standards, it was a most unusual election. In Uganda's presidential and parliamentary vote Thursday, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp were disabled by the government for “security reasons.” The main presidential challenger was whisked away by police. And police fired tear gas at angry...
The babies are called “bad blood.” Before they can walk or talk, hostile eyes slide suspiciously over them. In the womb, even their mothers might suspect them. They face a life being shunned, hated and rejected. They are the children of the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, the products of forced...
As mosquitoes buzzed about on her veranda one recent evening, Maureen Coetzee didn't reach for bug spray or a swatter. She dashed inside, grabbed a device resembling a drinking straw and sucked four mosquitoes into a specimen jar. She quickly identified them as Aedes aegypti, the villain in the...
Boko Haram, the extremist militia allied with Islamic State, killed dozens of people, including children, in a weekend attack on a village in northeastern Nigeria, a sign the group may be reasserting itself after a series of retreats.Boko Haram extremists attacked the village of Dalori late Saturday,...
There was one place Somalis could escape during the recent decades of terrorism, clan warfare and chaos: Liido Beach in the capital, Mogadishu, with its pure white sands and deep blue sea. This week the beach became part of the chaos as gunmen opened fire on an oceanfront restaurant as a car bomb...
Somalia's security forces ended a deadly siege of a beachfront restaurant in the capital, with more than 20 people killed in the attack, a police official said Friday. The security forces took control of the restaurant just before dawn, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein, speaking from the scene of the...
The tatty, faded umbrellas bob above a long queue of people, protection not against rain, but the parching sun. In what some farmers are calling the worst drought they've seen, residents in many rural townships saw the water in their taps dribble and die months ago. Crops didn't get planted. Wildlife...
The number of rhinos poached in South Africa, home to 80% of the world's population, fell marginally in 2015 after years of rising dramatically, according to newly released government figures. There were 1,175 rhinos killed last year, down from 1,215 the previous year, leading the government to...
A suicide car bomber rammed the gates of a restaurant near a beach in Somalia's capital before gunmen fought their way into the building in an attack that killed at least three people on Thursday, a police official said. The assailants may have taken some hostages inside the Liido Seafood restaurant,...
Moroccan police have arrested a Belgian man of Moroccan descent who is linked to Islamic State and had a "direct relationship" to the people who carried out the Paris attacks in November, the Interior Ministry said Monday. Join the conversation on Facebook >> The man had spent time in Syria getting...
An attack on a luxury Burkina Faso hotel and restaurant popular with foreigners left at least 28 victims, including one American, dead as an Al Qaeda affiliate staked out turf in the region, signaling a troubling surge of extremism. Four assailants also died in the overnight attack at the Splendid...
Burkina Faso and French forces killed at least three extremists and freed 126 people as they took control of a luxury hotel in the capital that had been seized by the attackers, the minister of security said Saturday. Officials said that 22 people were killed when the Islamic extremists stormed...
A day after declaring West Africa free of Ebola, the World Health Organization on Friday confirmed a new case of the disease in Sierra Leone. Samples taken from the body of a 22-year-old woman who died this week in the northern part of the country tested positive for the virus, local media reported....
Liberia was officially declared Ebola-free on Thursday, the last country in West Africa to reach that milestone after more than 28,500 people were infected and 11,300 perished in the worst outbreak of the disease. It was, in the words of the World Health Organization director-general, Margaret...
Marian Bah lost a child and husband to Ebola and was so shunned by her family and community in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, she said, that “I wanted to kill myself.” Agnes Saybeh has been left alone with the three orphaned children of her sister, who died of the disease, and a child of her own....
At least 60 people were killed and dozens injured Thursday when a truck bomb exploded at a police training center in the Libyan coastal town of Zlitan, officials said. The attack occurred in an area where an affiliate of the militant group Islamic State has reportedly tried to gain ground as it...
Humanitarian groups are growing increasingly concerned about two hunger emergencies unfolding in East Africa -- one caused by drought, the other by war. Millions of people in Ethiopia and South Sudan are short on food, international agencies say, and in South Sudan, conflict has made it difficult...
Her name is Penny Sparrow and, over the course of two days, she went from being an anonymous South African real estate agent to perhaps the country’s most hated woman. Sparrow ignited a social media storm when she posted a Facebook rant comparing black people to monkeys. The uproar has shone a...
Rwandan President Paul Kagame will follow the well-worn path of autocrats by seeking a third term in office next year, after changes to the country's constitutional limit that had allowed only two terms. Kagame announced in a televised New Year's Day address to the nation that he would seek a third...
Boko Haram extremists struck the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri for the first time in months Monday, attacking with rocket-propelled grenades and multiple suicide bombers, witnesses said. At least 30 people were killed and the death toll could go higher, officials said. The military said...
A gas tanker truck ignited an inferno at a crowded industrial gas plant in Nigeria on Thursday, killing more than 100 people lining up to refill their cooking gas cylinders in time for Christmas. The disaster took place in Nnewi, a predominantly Christian community in southeast Nigeria. By the...
In a year packed with terrorist attacks, the world's deadliest militant group has carried out massacres the size of the San Bernardino killings once or twice a week. And over time, it has undertaken dozens of attacks that dwarf November's deadly rampage in Paris, sometimes shooting down several...
The suspicious device discovered in the bathroom of an Air France flight was a hoax, the CEO of Air France said Sunday. The Boeing 777 was heading to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris from Mauritius when its pilots requested an emergency landing early Sunday at Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa....
A Burundian army official says 87 people were killed in violence Friday when three military installations were attacked by armed men. Army spokesman Col. Gaspard Baratuza said Saturday eight security officers were among those killed and 21 others were wounded in the fighting. Baratuza said forces...
On a lazy summer's night, a South African family drifted indoors after arriving home. A gunshot rang out and the evening flipped. Gunmen materialized in the low light. A second shot, and Tracey Lomax saw her husband fall. "You're not the boss!" one of them kept yelling furiously at him. Lomax didn't...
South Africa’s financial markets were in shock Thursday after President Jacob Zuma abruptly fired his finance minister, triggering a rapid slide in the currency, the rand. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, who was dismissed late Wednesday, had been seen as a steady hand who was trying to rein in...
By surrendering to authorities, two Americans associated with Somali militant group the Shabab have turned a spotlight on a group weakened and deeply divided as it battles defections to its rival Islamic State. Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, a Minnesotan who left America in 2008 to join the Shabab...
Former Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will appeal his murder conviction to South Africa’s highest court as he remains free on bail after a hearing Tuesday. Pistorius, who appeared briefly at the bail hearing, will continue to live at his uncle’s home and is allowed to leave daily between 7 a.m....
A triple suicide bombing Saturday at a market on an island in Lake Chad killed at least 15 people and injured 130, Chad's government said. A top police official blamed the carnage on Nigeria's Islamic extremist group Boko Haram. The three explosions on Koulfoua were carried out by women, said Chad police...
South African prosecutors on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Oscar Pistorius, after the double-amputee athlete's conviction in the death of his girlfriend was changed by an appeals court from reckless killing to the more serious charge of murder. A High Court hearing is expected next week to...
It was “a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions,” said a South African appeals court judge, describing the life of double amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius, who inspired the world by overcoming his disability but fatally shot his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day 2013. But despite the pathos of...
The final hours of Pope Francis’ African tour might well have been most dangerous moments of his papacy, as he visited a volatile Muslim neighborhood in the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui, followed by an open air Mass at a stadium. It was the most powerful, symbolic moment of his Africa...
Pope Francis arrived Sunday in the conflict-torn Central African Republic, brushing aside security concerns to bring a message of peace and reconciliation to a country where violence between Christian and Muslim militants has forced nearly 1 million from their homes over the last two years and...
Mortars lit up the dawn sky in an attrack on a United Nations base in the northern Mali city of Kidal early Saturday, killing at least three people. The bombardment came eight days after Islamic extremists attacked a luxury hotel to the south in Bamako, the capital, leaving 20 people dead. Two...
Pope Francis on Saturday honored the Ugandan Christians who were burnt alive rather than renounce their faith a century ago, urging today's Catholics to follow in their missionary zeal and spread the faith at home and abroad. A somber Francis prayed at shrines dedicated to the 23 Anglican and 22...
Malian special forces have arrested two men over last week's attack on a luxury hotel in the capital that killed 19 people, according to a statement distributed Friday morning. The statement identified the two men, both arrested in Bamako, but provided no other details on their background or their...
A South African court Thursday threw out a moratorium on the trade of rhino horns, a move hotly debated in a country that, more than any other, holds the survival of the species in its hands. Proponents of lifting the ban argue that doing so will discourage illegal poaching that has steadily increased...
The body of a suspected suicide bomber was found at the scene of an attack on Tunisia's presidential guard, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility Wednesday for the attack that left 13 people dead. Tuesday's attack on a bus carrying Tunisia's presidential guards involved about 22 pounds of...
Almost as soon as Pope Francis alighted from his flight to Kenya's capital on his first trip to Africa, he sent a powerful message of humility and equality. The pope stunned Kenyans not only by riding in a modest gray Honda through Nairobi's streets, but also by traveling with the window down,...
An explosion struck a bus carrying members of Tunisia's presidential guard in the country's capital Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding more than a dozen others in what the government described as a terrorist attack. The blast on a tree-lined avenue in the heart of Tunis is a new blow...
Butter! Cream! Meat! (And don’t forget to eat the fat!) Roast chicken! (Skin on please!) Duck fat! And burgers with bacon strips on almond flour buns, dripping with thick slices of melted cheese, are also on the menu. With this tempting mantra, South African diet guru and self-proclaimed maverick...
Ebola, the virus that killed more than 4,800 people in Liberia since the outbreak began in December 2013, is back after the West African country was twice declared free of the disease. And no one is sure why. After a 15-year-old boy recently contracted the virus, his father and brother also tested...
Islamic State militants may be under bombardment by a dozen world powers bent on wiping them out, but they have managed to expand their repertoire of terrorist tactics to carry out ever more sophisticated attacks that disrupt Western society. The band of extremists has succeeded in escalating the...
It was a typical guest list at an African hotel in a troubled region: aid workers from all over, trying to make things better; Russian pilots; Chinese business people; Western politicians; American military personnel. When terrorists linked to one of Al Qaeda’s many West African affiliates stormed...
From cafes in Paris to the teeming markets of Nigeria, in tourist resorts on the Sinai peninsula and now a glitzy hotel in the dusty capital of Mali, the message Islamist terrorists sent to the world over the last several weeks is that no one — almost anywhere — is safe. The attack Friday, in which...