Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is expected to visit the north-eastern town where more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted, officials have said. Nothing was seen of the girls for almost a month after they were taken from Chibok by Boko Haram militants. But on Monday the group released a video showing more than 100 of them and offering an exchange for prisoners. The president has come under pressure over his government’s failure to rescue the girls, but has ruled out a swap. On Thursday, relatives[...]

Nigeria on Saturday recorded her first Ebola survivor, as Ameyo Adadevoh, a medical doctor and senior consultant in Lagos. She was discharged from quarantine and declared fit and Ebola-free. The doctor who treated Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who brought Ebola into the country, at First Consultant Hospital, and was subsequently infected with the virus, has recovered and has since been discharged from the Isolation centre in Lagos. Ameyo Adadevoh, a {....}

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has resigned, in a move observers hope will end a political crisis in Baghdad. Haider al-Abadi, a deputy speaker of parliament, has been asked by Iraq’s president to form a government. Mr Maliki’s earlier refusal to resign after eight years in power had been blamed for deepening the crisis. The UN and US have welcomed his resignation. The government has been unable to stop Islamist fighters from seizing vast areas in northern Iraq. The offensive {....}

The scale of the Ebola outbreak appears to be “vastly underestimated”, the UN’s health agency says, as the death toll from the disease reaches 1,069. The World Health Organization said its staff had seen evidence that the numbers of reported cases and deaths do not reflect the scale of the crisis. It said in a statement that “extraordinary measures” were needed. The outbreak began in Guinea in February and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. However, the WHO said the risk of {.....}

Oil firms were last night withdrawing staff from Nigeria and Liberia after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak to be an international public health emergency. Leading medical experts said the virus – which has a death rate of 50% and has already killed nearly 1,000 people – required an “extraordinary response” to halt its spread. The disease began in the forests of eastern Guinea in February, but its epicentre has spread to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria – home {....}

South Sudan refugees residing in a UN camp are living in knee-deep, sewage-contaminated floodwater, forcing some families to sleep standing up so they can hold their children out of the water, an international aid group has said. Doctors Without Borders said on Friday the conditions in the camp in Bentiu are “an affront to human dignity”, and demanded that dry land within the camp be immediately made available for living space. The residents, most of whom fled fighting between rebels who {....}

Israel launched air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday in response to Palestinian rockets fired after Egyptian-mediated talks failed to extend a 72-hour truce in the month-long war. As rocket-warning sirens sounded in southern Israel, the military said Hamas had fired at least 18 rockets from Gaza and Israel’s “Iron Dome” interceptor system brought down two. Gaza militants said they had fired 10 rockets on Friday. In the first casualties since hostilities resumed on Friday, Palestinian {....}

Last night the President of Liberia – where victims have been dragged into the streets and abandoned – announced a state of emergency with the Army setting up road blocks for ‘Operation White Shield’. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said her countrymen were still refusing to send sick relatives to isolation centres, massively increasing the spread of the epidemic. ‘Ignorance and poverty, as well as entrenched religious and cultural practices, continue to exacerbate the spread of the disease’, she said. And enforced {....}

Barack Obama has said it is too soon to send an experimental drug used to treat the deadly Ebola virus to West Africa, as experts meet to decide whether the outbreak warrants declaring a global health emergency. Two US aid workers striken by the virus were administered ZMapp in Liberia ahead of their evacuation to America for treatment. Their condition appears to be improving, but it is unclear if the drug is directly responsible. ZMapp is a drug made from antibodies produced in a lab that has {....}

The Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, on Wednesday described the Ebola outbreak in the country as a “national emergency’’. Mr. Chukwu made the statement at an emergency meeting convened by the House of Representatives Committee on Health over the Ebola outbreak in Abuja. He said that out of six Nigerians diagnosed with the Ebola virus, one died on Tuesday while the five others were receiving treatment. The minister said that everyone in the world now was at risk, adding that the {....}

Indirect Israel-Palestinian negotiations over extending a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and ending a blockade of the territory got underway in Cairo on Wednesday, with positions from both sides maximalist and much jockeying expected ahead. Israel wants the Islamic militant Hamas to disarm, or at least ensure it cannot re-arm, before considering the group's demand that the territory's borders be opened. Israel and Egypt imposed a closure after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, although {....}

One of the nurses who attended Patrick Sawyer, the first Ebola victim in Nigeria, has died. Health Minister Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu made this known in Abuja August 6, Punch reports. He also revealed that 5 other medical practitioners involved in treatment contracted the virus. “Nigeria has now recorded seven confirmed cases of Ebola Virus Disease. The first one was the index case, which is the imported case from Liberia of which the victim is now late. Yesterday, 5th August, 2014 {....}

Clashes between African migrants in the French port city of Calais have left more than 50 people injured. A fight which started on Monday evening at a food distribution centre was initially broken up by police but later continued into the night. Hundreds of migrants live in informal camps in the Calais port, trying to cross into Britain illegally. French police have spent months trying to break up the camps, but the migrants say they have nowhere else to go. The latest fight between Sudanese and Eritrean migrants {.....}

Nigerian authorities said on Monday that a doctor in Lagos has contracted Ebola, the second case in the sprawling megacity as the deadliest ever outbreak of the disease continues to spread fear and panic across west Africa. The confirmation that a fourth doctor had been infected comes as fear and anger about the dead being left unburied in Liberia’s capital Monrovia brought protesters into the streets, while Sierra Leone’s president said Monday that the epidemic threatened the “very essence” {.....}

According to CNN, Three vials containing an experimental drug stored at subzero temperatures were flown into Liberia last week in a last-ditch effort to save two American missionary workers who had contracted Ebola, according to a source familiar with details of the treatment. The drug appears to have worked, sources say. Dr. Kent Brantly’s and Nancy Writebol’s conditions significantly improved after receiving the medication, sources say. Brantly was able to walk into Emory University Hospital in {....}

22 people were killed in a day of militia fighting for control of the international airport in the capital Tripoli has , a spokesman for Libya’s interim government said. In a statement early today, it said “heavily armed groups” have shelled “civilian targets” endangering thousands of citizens and leaving hundreds of families displaced. The 22 people were killed yesterday alone, the latest casualties in fighting that has claimed more than 200 lives in recent weeks. Libya is in the grip of its worst violence {....}

African Leaders attending next week’s US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington D.C. will be screened for Ebola, President Barack Obama has announced. At least 730 people have died from the outbreak in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Nigeria recently, recorded one case. A total of approximately 1,300 people have been affected by the viral outbreak since March. Ebola kills 90 percent of patients within days. It is transmitted through direct contact with infected persons, as well as the consumption {....}

Dr Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Sunday the American doctor who contracted Ebola in West Africa seemed to have improved. Dr Frieden, who was making media appearances in an effort to reassure a public worried by press reports and speculation over the West African outbreak, the worst ever, told NBC’s Meet the Press talk show it was encouraging to see Dr Kent Brantly walk out of an ambulance unassisted when he arrived {....}