School closures ‘last resort’ despite variants – WHO, FG raised N2.36tn from capital market in 2020

After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, thousands have been evacuated to Europe. Paralympic wheelchair basketball player Nilofar Bayat and her husband are now living in the Spanish city of Bilbao – making a fresh start on the court.

Pro-democracy news site Citizen News said its decision to shut down came in response to the recent closure of Stand News. It is the third pro-democracy publication to cease operations in recent months.

Droves of armoured vehicles are patrolling the streets of Limbe in Cameroon's conflict-torn South West Region ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) soccer finals starting on Jan. 9 that separatist militants have vowed to disrupt. Cameroon is hosting the tournament in six cities, but security is potentially most at threat in Limbe, a city on the tropical Atlantic coast whose surrounding region has been rocked by armed attacks since war broke out in 2017.

Whether it's COVID-19, climate change or migration — fake news spreads six times faster on social media than facts. But how can I identify and check fake news? Here's some advice from DW's fact-checking team.

While politically a part of Yemen, which is located on the Arabian Peninsula and thus part of Western Asia, Socotra and the rest of its archipelago is a continental fragment that is geographically part of Africa.

This is the 49-year-old man accused of setting South Africa's parliament building on fire, which completely destroyed its lower house National Assembly chamber. The chamber was destroyed after flare-up on the second day.

In a bid to question the high rates of hospitalisation due to Covid-19, certain publications are claiming that actors are pretending to be patients. We take a look at one example in France and another false claim in Germany.

As the Omicron variant of Covid-19 continues to drive new infections around the world, Israel has become one of the first countries to start rolling out a fourth dose of the vaccine. The so-called "second" booster jab is currently available to the over-60s, health workers and anyone considered medically vulnerable.

Emmanuel Macron tells Le Parisien he wants to "piss off" the unvaccinated, prompting reaction from papers and rival politicians. Papers also reflect on the upcoming anniversary of the January 6 storming of the US Capitol. There's outrage in the Australian press after Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic is granted a medical exemption from the Australian Open's vaccine requirements. Plus: we discover two stories of people using billboards to look for love.

Low COVID-19 vaccination rates in Africa Cup of Nations host Cameroon and a fourth wave of the coronavirus across much of the continent could make for sparsely-attended matches when the soccer finals kick off on Sunday. Cameroon announced last month that it would require spectators at Africa's premiere soccer competition to be fully vaccinated and show a negative test result before entering stadiums.

As South Africa exits its fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of its citizens think the travel restrictions imposed on them by some foreign countries were unfair. But first, more protesters are fatally shot in Sudan's capital Khartoum and other Sudanese cities. The internet and mobile networks are cut off, but that doesn't stop rallies against the military from springing up once again. And we see how Senegal is hoping for success at the African Cup of Nations. The team is full of top-flight athletes but has yet to win a major competition.

East Africa has been ramping up efforts to expose its citizens to Chinese culture - particularly through language. In Kenya Mandarin is offered as a selective language in the national curriculum, while in Uganda it’s now a compulsory subject in some schools. But is this simply an exchange of cultures, or is there more to it?