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JOHANNESBURG – The ex-wife of South Africa’s first black President Nelson Mandela has demanded his village home for her children, potentially trigging the first legal dispute since his death. Winnie Madikiela-Mandela’s lawyers said she was asserting her “customary rights” by demanding the house. Mr Mandela’s estate was provisionally valued at 46m rand ($4.3m; £2.5m) following…

JOHANESSBURG – An earthquake has struck South Africa, killing one person and trapping some mine workers in a town south-west of Johannesburg, emergency workers say. The US Geological Survey said the 5.3 magnitude tremor was near Orkney, a centre of gold-mining operations. One person died after a wall in Orkney collapsed and emergency medical service…

MONROVIA – Liberia’s government has ordered that all bodies of people killed by the Ebola virus must be cremated. The decision follows the refusal of some communities to allow the burial of Ebola victims on their land. Meanwhile, Nigeria says it has a second Ebola case – that of one of the doctors who treated…

WEST AFRICA – The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is spreading faster than efforts to control it, World Health Organization (WHO) head Margaret Chan has said. She told a summit of regional leaders that failure to contain it could be “catastrophic” in terms of lives lost. But she said the virus, which has claimed 729…

KAMPALA – Uganda’s Constitutional Court has annulled tough anti-gay legislation signed into law in February. It ruled that the bill was passed by MPs in December without the requisite quorum and was therefore illegal. Homosexual acts were already illegal, but the new law allowed for life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” and banned the “promotion of…

LUSAKA – It’s the new frontier for the internet – connecting billions of people in Africa and Asia who have yet to sample the delights of the digital world. Through an organisation called Internet.org, Facebook has put itself at the forefront of this mission. Today it unveils a clever plan to get millions of people…

MOGADISHU – Militant Islamists in Somalia have shot dead a Muslim woman for refusing to wear a veil, her relatives say. Ruqiya Farah Yarow was killed outside her hut near the southern Somali town of Hosingow by gunmen belonging to the al-Shabab group, they say. The militants had ordered her to put on a veil,…

MONROVIA – Liberia has suspended all football activities in an effort to control the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. There was a risk of infection because football is a contact sport, the football association said. The number of people killed by the virus in West Africa has now reached 672, the WHO says. Ebola…

ABUJA – The use of vehicles in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno state has been banned during Eid, the three-day festival that ends Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month. Eid started on Sunday in Nigeria, and authorities say they have intelligence that Islamist group Boko Haram is planning to carry out car bomb attacks. Meanwhile, police say a…

ALGIERS – There are no survivors from the Air Algerie AH5017 passenger jet that crashed in Mali, says the French President, Francois Hollande. Mr Hollande said one flight data recorder had been recovered, after French troops reached the crash site near Mali’s border with Burkina Faso. Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane early…