Group asks Keir Starmer for help to persuade Ghanaian government to pay backlog of tuition fees and living allowances

Students from Ghana at UK universities say they are in danger of being deported after being stranded by their own government without promised scholarships or tuition fee payments.

The group representing more than 100 doctoral students has petitioned Downing Street and Keir Starmer asking for help to persuade the Ghanaian government to pay the backlog of tuition fees and living allowances running into millions of pounds.

Australian researchers think the skeleton found in South Africa is not the same species as two found in the same South Africa cave system

Little Foot, one of the world’s most complete hominin fossils, may be a new species of human ancestor, according to research that raises questions about our evolutionary past.

Publicly unveiled in 2017, Little Foot is the most complete Australopithecus skeleton ever found. The foot bones that lend the fossil its name were first discovered in South Africa 1994, leading to a painstaking excavation over 20 years in the Sterkfontein cave system.

UN secretary general António Guterres says ‘unjustifiable’ attack on base in city of Kadugli ‘could be war crime’

A drone strike has hit a United Nations peacekeeping logistics base in war-torn Sudan, killing six peacekeepers, the UN secretary general António Guterres has said.

Eight other peacekeepers were wounded in the strike on Saturday in the city of Kadugli in the central region of Kordofan. All the victims are Bangladeshi nationals, serving in the UN interim security force for Abyei (Unisfa).

Mike Waltz warns ‘spoilers’ will be held to account as rebel fighters escalate offensive in South Kivu province

The US has accused Rwanda of violating a US-brokered peace agreement by backing a deadly new rebel offensive in the mineral-rich eastern Congo, and warned action will be taken against “spoilers”.

The remarks by the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, came as more than 400 civilians have been killed since the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels escalated their offensive in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, according to officials who also say Rwandan special forces were in the strategic city of Uvira.

Kristi Noem says Ethiopia ‘no longer meets conditions’ for US to provide work authorization and legal protection

The US is ending temporary legal status for citizens of Ethiopia in the United States, according to a government notice on Friday, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on legal and illegal immigration.

“After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate US government agencies, the secretary determined that Ethiopia no longer continues to meet the conditions for the designation for Temporary Protected Status,” homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said in a notice posted in the Federal Register.

Maduro regime accuses Caribbean nation of participating in ‘theft of Venezuelan oil’ as tensions mount in region

Venezuela has accused the government of Trinidad and Tobago of taking part in the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast last week, as Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro continues to reverberate across the region.

In a statement on Monday, the Maduro regime accused Trinidad and Tobago of participating in “the theft of Venezuelan oil, committed by the US administration on 10 December with the assault on a vessel transporting this strategic Venezuelan product”.