AFP, Yaound
Cameroon’s main opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who was runner-up in last year’s presidential election, on Friday goes to trial in a military court on insurrection charges that have sparked international outcry.
Kamto and dozens of political allies and supporters face charges of insurrection, hostility to the motherland and rebellion, crimes which could carry the death penalty. His trial will go ahead despite repeated protests from France, the United States and the European Union, who have been calling for his release from detention for eight months.
Russians go to polls after summer of protests
AFP, Moscow
Russians are set to vote in local elections on Sunday following a hugely controversial campaign in Moscow that degenerated into the biggest police crackdown on protesters in nearly a decade.
Municipal and regional polls will be held across the vast country, but most attention will be focused on the Moscow parliament vote following the arrests and jailings of independent would-be candidates and their supporters.
US stores ask
customers not to openly carry guns
AFP, Washington
US pharmacies CVS and Walgreens and supermarket chain Wegmans on Thursday asked customers not to openly carry firearms in their stores, or not to bring them in at all.
The calls by the stores-which follows a similar move by Kroger, the country’s biggest supermarket chain-come as the United States grapples with an epidemic of gun violence and frequent mass shootings.
Probe ordered as plastic ends life of Delhi’s last cape buffalo
PTI, Delhi
The Delhi zoo on Thursday ordered an enquiry after its last cape buffalo died allegedly due to the consumption of a plastic bag.
The cape buffalo, a species found only in Africa, died on August 27. Veterinary Officer Abhijit Bhawal, who conducted the postmortem found a plastic-like material in the stomach of the animal, an official said. The zoo had two cape buffaloes. One of them died in February 2017.
Jihadists kill three soldiers, policeman in Nigeria
AFP, Nigeria
At least three Nigerian soldiers and a policeman were killed on Thursday when IS-backed jihadists attacked the town of Gajiram in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, security sources and residents told AFP.
Fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) stormed the town around 0100 GMT in nine all-terrain trucks fitted with machine guns and engaged troops and policemen in a gunbattle. It was the third attack on the military in the town in a month, part of a wider Islamist militant insurgency that has raged in Nigeria for a decade.
