A total of 157 intending pilgrims from Katsina State will not perform this year's Hajj due to Saudi Arabia's new policy on old timers.Alhaji Aminu Danbaba, the Executive Director of the

One hundred and seventy four old timer pilgrims from Jigawa State my miss this year's hajj if the Saudi Arabian authorities finally concludes arrangement to ban old timers from going to hajj, the Executive Secretary, Jigawa State Pilgrims Welfare Board, Alhaji Usman Sulaiman has said.

Sultan of Sokoto Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar has urged Nigerians to ensure they come out en mass to vote credible leaders.He spoke yesterday at the close of the Ramadan lecture at Sultan Muhammad Bello mosque in Sokoto.

Some young Nigerians are gearing up to use BlackBerries, mobile phones and social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook to monitor polls in January, in an effort to stamp out electoral fraud.

Constitutional Lawyer and Executive Director of Human Right Monitor (HRM), Barrister Festus Okoye, has expressed reservation on the viability of the time table released yesterday by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the 2011 general elections.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has expressed concern that the timing and the schedule are too tight and can be a threat to free and fair and credible elections.

Pope Benedict XIV has identified manipulation of religion for political ends, ethnicity, religious discrimination, ignorance, underdevelopment and poverty as major causes of violence within religious communities.

Gunmen suspected to be members of the radical Boko Haram sect launched a massive attack last night against the Bauchi prison, in what appeared to be a failed effort to break free their comrades being held there, witnesses and officials said.

The tenure of Sokoto State governor, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, will end in May 2012 contrary to the pronouncement of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that governorship elections would be held in Sokoto in January 2011, the Sokoto Progressive Youth Forum (SPYF) has said.

A changing climate will prompt changes in behaviour across Southern Africa. And when it comes to adaptation, Swazi farmer Bongani Phakathi is a frustrated man a few steps ahead of his neighbours.

As darkness falls on a cool evening in Luanda, a group of women sit huddled under threadbare blankets outside one of the city's few maternity hospitals. "I have to be here," Paula Silva, 45, said, shivering slightly.

The United Nations declared 2010 the Year of Biodiversity. But 17 years after the Convention on Biological Diversity was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the issue of biopiracy is still pitching North against South.

As she leaves the community health centre in Abobo-Baule with her newborn baby, Abiba Tahoué is doubly satisfied.

Twenty-eight minors have been documented as victims of last month's four-day raid of more than a dozen villages centred around Walikale, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), U.N. officials told reporters here today. Children, including one 12-years old boy were identified. The Walikale victim toll has risen to over 240.

When 11-year-old Ronald Gathece was placed on antiretrovirals (ARVs) after being diagnosed HIV-positive, medical staff did not monitor his reaction to the treatment. But the side effects had been so bad that the young boy had contemplated suicide.

Despite a bumper harvest of maize just a few months ago, many residents in the eastern part of Kenya are facing hunger and starvation. While granaries in the region may be full, the grain cannot be freely sold, let alone eaten.

September in Mozambique's capital has begun with violent protests. Thousands have been striking over an increase in the prices of basic goods, including bread. Police responded with force - firing on crowds gathered on the streets in several suburbs and townships in and around Maputo.

Israel’s prime minister sounds upbeat, even if no one else does

YET another bout of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations was launched this week amid a splurge of pious public talk tempered by sceptical punditry. Not much new in that, it seems, though it is almost two years since the previous direct talks took place (and ran aground).

Nothing new, either, in two ghastly shootings on the West Bank in the days before the talks. The first left four Israeli civilians dead, two of them the parents of six children and another a pregnant woman. Hamas proudly took the “credit” as a means of exposing, it said, the collusion between the Palestinian Authority and the occupying forces of Israel. The following day two more Israelis were wounded. ...

A leaked UN report looks very bad for Rwanda’s government

IN 1996 Rwandan troops descended on the Chimanga refugee camp in east Congo, to which their compatriots had fled to avoid genocide at home. The soldiers gathered the refugees together with promises of meat to fortify themselves for a promised return to Rwanda. “At a given moment,” says the draft of a new report from the United Nations, “a whistle sounded and the soldiers positioned all around the camp opened fire on the refugees. According to different sources, between 500 and 800 refugees were killed in this way.”

In the 16 years since his rebel forces halted the Rwandan genocide, the country’s president, Paul Kagame, has earned a reputation for steering his country firmly towards stability, economic growth and a measure of reconciliation. Lately, that reputation has come under attack. Before a landslide election victory in August Mr Kagame found himself under heavy fire for the mysterious murders, oppression and censorship that marred the run-up to the polls. Grim-faced and impatient of critics, Mr Kagame weathered the storm. ...

Domestic workers in the Middle East have a horrible time

AS a maid working in Saudi Arabia, Lahanda Purage Ariyawathie suffered at the hands of her Saudi employer and his wife, who skewered her body with at least 24 nails and needles (pictured). Her case was unusually brutal, but the abuse of domestic workers in the Middle East is all too common.

Huge numbers of migrant domestic workers, mostly from Asia and Africa, are employed throughout the region. Some 1.5m work in Saudi Arabia, 660,000 in Kuwait and 200,000 in Lebanon. Many work very long hours and receive little food, no time off and pay that is a fraction of any minimum wage, if it materialises at all. Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based group, says at least one domestic worker died every week in Lebanon between January 2007 and August 2008. Almost half were suicides and many were as a result of falling from high buildings, often while trying to escape their employers. Mistreatment is so widespread that the Philippines, Ethiopia and Nepal no longer let their citizens go to Lebanon to work as maids, though such bans have had little effect. ...

President Jacob Zuma is badly bruised by weeks of crippling strikes

THE public-sector strikes that have paralysed hospitals, schools and other essential services across the country since August 18th have damaged South Africa’s image abroad. They have also undermined relations between the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), part of the ruling tripartite alliance, together with the communists. On September 1st Cosatu rejected the latest pay offer from the government, so as The Economist went to press the strikes seemed destined to continue, and even intensify. President Jacob Zuma, who ordered both sides back to the negotiating table on August 30th in a last-ditch attempt to end the strike, has emerged weakened from the fray.

Cosatu, with a membership of 2m, has been feeling increasingly aggrieved since Mr Zuma took over as president 16 months ago. Having helped elevate him to power, the country’s biggest union federation thought that he was their man. Cosatu had expected to play an important role in the new administration. Instead, it has repeatedly found its policies ignored. In June relations reached near breaking-point when the ANC threatened to bring disciplinary proceedings against Cosatu’s leader, Zwelinzima Vavi, for having accused the government of failing to take action against corrupt ministers. ...

…comes an almighty hangover

THE warm, fuzzy feeling of national pride and unity engendered by South Africa’s hosting of the football World Cup did not last long. As a strike by more than 1m public-sector workers enters its second week, hospitals, schools and other services across the country remain closed. Women in labour are being turned away from hospitals, the sick and the dying left unattended and pupils trying to get into school beaten up by their own teachers. The army has been called in to help. Police have been using water cannon and rubber bullets to break up the most violent protests. Dozens have been arrested.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the biggest union federation and a supposed ally of the ruling African National Congress, is now threatening to shut down the entire economy by calling all its members out in a sympathy strike next week unless the government gives in to the public-sector unions’ demands for an 8.6% wage rise—more than double the inflation rate—plus a housing allowance of 1,000 rand ($135) a month. The government says it cannot afford more than its final offer of a 7% rise plus a 700 rand allowance along with a previously agreed on 1.5% performance bonus. ...