Presidential spokesperson says all those abducted from a Catholic school in Niger state last month are now free

Nigerian authorities say they have secured the release of a further 130 schoolchildren kidnapped from a Catholic school in November, after 100 were freed earlier this month.

“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” presidential spokesperson Sunday Dare said on X, in a post accompanied by a photo of smiling children.

New Africa Hub confronts colonial-era silences by asking visitors to share insights on 40,000 objects

It’s a rare thing for a museum to talk about what it doesn’t know. But unanswered questions and archival silences are at the heart of the new Africa Hub at Manchester Museum, north-west England, which is inviting people around the world to help fill the gaps.

The museum holds more than 40,000 items from across Africa, many of which were traded, collected, looted or preserved during the era of the British empire.

Echoing the dismantling of USAID, other countries are changing funding priorities and health and hunger programmes in Africa will lose out

The notion of humanitarian aid being used to combat poverty and hunger is being replaced in Europe with geopolitical “games” as states redirect aid to Ukraine and to defence spending, analysts warn after recent announcements by Sweden and Germany.

Earlier this year, humanitarian groups called for European donors to fill the gap as President Donald Trump dismantled the USAID programme, but instead other nations are further pulling back from their commitments around the world.

Experts decry ‘neocolonialist’ Guinea-Bissau study after Trump administration changed advice for US babies

The Trump administration has indicated that it will fund a $1.6m study on hepatitis B vaccination of newborns in the west African country of Guinea-Bissau, where nearly one in five adults live with the virus – a move that researchers call “highly unethical” and “extremely risky”.

The news follows an official change in recommendations on hepatitis B vaccines at birth from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which called the shots an “individual” decision, despite decades of safe and effective vaccination and no evidence of harm. It is part of sweeping changes to childhood immunizations by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, which have global repercussions – including cutting funding for programs that bring vaccines to countries around the world.

Exclusive Guardian investigation finds companies set up by people sanctioned by US hired Colombian fighters for Rapid Support Forces, widely suspected of war crimes in Sudan

Close to Tottenham Hotspur’s shiny football stadium in London is a squat, nondescript block of flats. It holds a grim secret beyond the unremarkable beige brickwork – a cramped, second-floor apartment in the British capital, linked to murderous atrocities unfolding 3,000 miles south.

The one-bedroom flat off north London’s Creighton Road is, according to UK government records, tied to a transnational network of companies involved in the mass recruitment of mercenaries to fight in Sudan alongside paramilitaries accused of myriad war crimes and genocide.

Vessel does not appear to be on list of US-sanctioned vessels, which would represent escalation in blockade

US forces on Saturday apprehended a second merchant vessel carrying oil off the coast of Venezuela in international waters in the midst of an American blockade against the country’s oil, according to the US homeland security department.

The stoppage follows the seizure by US forces of another oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on 10 December. Both vessels were headed to Asia.