Prison services confirm attack on Janusz Waluś, who was due to be released after nearly three decades

The killer of the South African anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani has been stabbed in prison, days after the country’s top court ordered him to be released on parole, the prison service said.

In a statement, the Department of Correctional Services said on Tuesday it was “able to confirm an unfortunate stabbing incident” involving Janusz Waluś, who has spent nearly three decades in jail for the 1993 killing.

First global analysis follows discovery of toxic pollution particles in lungs and brains of foetuses

Almost a million stillbirths a year can be attributed to air pollution, according to the first global study.

The research estimated that almost half of stillbirths could be linked to exposure to pollution particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), mostly produced from the burning of fossil fuels.

Lack of opportunities, corruption and insecurity are driving younger people abroad – and is tearing the very fabric of the country’s culture

On the day Nigeria celebrated the anniversary of its independence from British rule, Chisom Chuba said farewell to her family and her home country. Her mother accompanied the industrial chemistry graduate to the airport but Chuba’s father stayed away.

“My father refused to come with me to the airport and I think it was because he was afraid of crying. I could see his hands shaking when he was giving me some advice,” she says.

The three stowaways were rescued by the Spanish Coastguard in Las Palmas on Monday after an 11-day voyage

The Spanish coastguard has rescued three migrants who stowed away on a tanker that arrived in the Canary Islands from Nigeria by balancing on its rudder just above the waterline.

In a photograph distributed on Twitter by the coastguard on Monday, the three stowaways are shown perched on the rudder of the oil and chemical tanker Alithini II.

Six objects stolen by British soldiers in 19th century are handed over in ceremony at Horniman Museum

Six artefacts looted by British troops 125 years ago from Benin City, in what is now Nigeria, are being repatriated to their place of origin, increasing pressure on the British Museum to follow suit.

The objects, including two 16th-century Benin Bronze plaques ransacked from the royal palace, were handed to Abba Tijani, the director general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), at a ceremony at the Horniman Museum in south London on Monday.

Eight civilians and one soldier died in attack on Mogadishu hotel, with six Islamist terrorists also dead

Somali security forces have stormed a hotel in Mogadishu, ending an occupation by al-Shabaab militants after a nearly daylong battle in which at least nine people were killed.

Gunfire crackled from inside the building as the special forces fought the militants more than 12 hours after the Islamist group stormed the building in the centre of the city.

Online scams such as banking and credit card fraud are the most prevalent cyberthreat, say Interpol

Police and investigators fear organised gangs of fraudsters are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa, exploiting new opportunities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis to earn huge sums with little risk of being caught.

The growth will have a direct impact on the rest of the world, where many victims of “hugely lucrative” fraud live, senior police officials have said.

Exhibitions in UK and Africa rewrite history by celebrating discoveries of overlooked black excavators in colonial era

The photographs are rare, the subject choice unusual, but what the photographer captured was a common sight in the early 20th century: a team of colonised people, hard at work under a hot sun, excavating an ancient monument.

Today, without these photos, taken in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s, there would be scarcely any evidence that African Kenyans were present at archaeological digs. Their contributions and priceless finds were credited to their European bosses – and their important role in unearthing the history of their own continent has been all but forgotten.

The pastoralists had been detained over the death of a police officer during protests against government plans to evict them from ancestral land

Prosecutors in Tanzania have dropped murder charges against 24 Maasai pastoralists who were detained over the death of a police officer earlier this year.

The officer died in June during protests against government plans to evict them from their ancestral land in Loliondo, in Ngorongoro District, to make way for a conservation and a luxury hunting reserve.

International community urged to intervene as hundreds of thousands forced into refugee camps as homes and crops destroyed and aid workers attacked

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war by South Sudan government forces against their own citizens, an investigation has found.

Deliberate starvation tactics used by government forces and allied militia, and by opposition forces, are driving civilians out of their homes, exacerbating Africa’s largest refugee crisis, according to the report published on Thursday.

The murder in 2021 came after a man was falsely accused of lighting deadly wildfires that he had come to help fight

An Algerian court has sentenced 49 people to death for the brutal mob killing of a painter who was suspected of starting devastating wildfires – but had actually come to help fight them, according to defence lawyers and the state news agency.

The killing in 2021 in the Kabyle region of north-east Algeria shocked the country after graphic images of it were shared on social media. It came soon after wildfires in the mountainous Berber region that killed about 90 people, including soldiers trying to tame the flames.

Abdalle Mumin was held after press groups said government edicts on coverage of offensive against al-Shabaab put them at risk

Authorities in Somalia have imposed strict bail conditions on a respected journalist and media rights campaigner that will prevent him from seeking medical attention for a suspected kidney condition aggravated by poor conditions during his detention by intelligence services and police earlier this year.

Abdalle Mumin, a co-founder of the Somali Journalists Syndicate and a contributor to the Guardian, was arrested in October after press organisations protested that directives issued by the information ministry on coverage of an offensive against Islamic militants in the unstable east African state put them at risk.

President orders Ministry of Environment and Forestry to launch investigation over contractor’s licence for removing trees

The Kenyan government has halted the transportation and export of Kilifi baobabs to Georgia and ordered an investigation into how a foreign contractor received permission to transport the ancient trees out of the country.

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to investigate whether Georgy Gvasaliya had the proper licence to take the trees out of Kenya under the Nagoya protocol, an international agreement that governs the conditions for the export of genetic resources, which has been incorporated into Kenyan law.

• Pierre-Alain Mounguengui seen with Infantino and Qatar emir
• Mounguengui charged with not reporting crimes of paedophilia

The international players’ union, Fifpro, has questioned why the president of the Gabonese Football Federation (Fegafoot) was allowed to attend the opening match of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar despite being charged in connection with the investigation into allegations of widespread sexual abuse in his country.

Pierre-Alain Mounguengui, who was released at the end of October after six months in preventive custody in Gabon having been charged with “failure to report crimes of paedophilia”, was pictured alongside the Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, and Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, at Sunday’s opening ceremony at Al Bayt Stadium.

Julius Maada Bio says 22% allocation of total government funding is needed to ensure all children can go to school

Sierra Leone’s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying the country cannot develop unless all children go to school.

Speaking to the Guardian, Julius Maada Bio admitted that allocating 1.7tn leones (£80m) this year for its ambitious educational reform programme was a risk, but said: “We are throwing all our resources, all our energy into education. We cannot develop without improving education. I see it as an existential issue.

Developing nations hope draft resolution will pave way for fresh talks on global tax policy

Developing nations are hoping to secure greater power over global tax affairs at a critical United Nations vote in New York on Wednesday.

If the body’s members vote in favour of a resolution put forward by the African Group of states, it could pave the way toward fresh intergovernmental talks on global tax policy.

Tory government eager to focus on trade rather than Cyril Ramaphosa’s refusal to put sanctions on Russia

The South African president has started a two-day state visit to the UK, the first since King Charles took the throne, with the Conservative government eager to focus on trade rather than challenge South Africa’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip has been much delayed due to Covid and only by chance became the first state visit of the king’s reign.

After decades of emphasis on STIs, HIV, Aids and unwanted pregnancy, a wave of initiatives around the world are using a more sex-positive narrative

In the village in Kenya where Swiry Nyar Kano (not her real name) grew up, sex and diversity weren’t talked about much.

The topics didn’t come up in conversation with her parents, and at school she was taught about human anatomy and “sexual immorality”, and told that homosexuality was a sin.

A scheme that sets down strict grazing plans to benefit the environment and generate revenue for local people was highlighted at Cop27 as a future model

When Andrew Dokhole, a community leader in Isiolo, northern Kenya, took on the task of explaining a proposed soil carbon removal project a decade ago, he had to convince largely illiterate people about the benefits of a “foreign” concept.

“Our people didn’t know what carbon was,” says Dokhole. “There is no word for carbon in our local language, not even in Swahili, the national language. Yet the success of the project depended on the pastoralists understanding how the concept works and how it would affect their daily activities.”

Janusz Waluś murdered head of communist party in 1993, risking outbreak of political violence before first multiracial elections

South Africa’s top court has ordered the release on parole of the man convicted of assassinating anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani, a murder that threatened to plunge the country into political violence before its transition to democracy.

Janusz Waluś, 69, killed Hani, a hugely popular leader of the Communist party, a year before South Africa’s first multiracial elections. He was sentenced to life in prison and his applications to be released on parole have been rejected by several justice ministers.