South Africa

When John Kani launched his acting career in the 1960s, the only stage he could find was an empty snake pit at a shuttered South African museum.

His latest production, "Kunene and the King," opened with the Royal Shakespeare Company and played on London's West End.

It's now resuming a South African tour that was interrupted by the pandemic's theater closures.

Tom Cruise unveiled the world-first screening of "Top Gun: Maverick" at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on April 28, introducing the long-awaited sequel while balanced atop a flying bi-plane.

Africa is facing an explosion of preventable diseases due to delays in vaccinating children, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on April 28, with measles cases jumping 400 percent.

Twenty African countries reported measles outbreaks in the first quarter of this year, eight more than in the first three months of 2021.

A rare rough ruby dubbed one of the world's biggest has gone on display for the first time ahead of an auction in the Gulf emirate of Dubai.

The 8,400-carat stone, nicknamed Burj Alhamal and weighing 2.8 kilograms, was mined in Tanzania and made its debut at a Dubai hotel on Friday as part of SJ Gold and Diamond's Callisto collection.

Flooding in South Africa's Durban area has taken at least 300 lives and is a "catastrophe of enormous proportions," President Cyril Ramaphosa said Wednesday.

"This disaster is part of climate change. It is telling us that climate change is serious, it is here," said Ramaphosa, visiting flooded areas of Durban and the surrounding eThekwini metropolitan area.

Entering their fourth day without power or water, Durban's poorest residents lined up on Thursday to collect water from burst pipes and dug through layers of mud to retrieve their few possessions.

There was a sense of despair amid the stench of sewage, growing stronger as the rains which wrought so much devastation stopped and the tropical heat returned.

Turkey will become a regional logistic hub, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on April 12, while revealing a "Transport and Logistics Master Plan" for 2053, which also includes the Canal Istanbul.

From wind farms across the African coastline to geothermal projects in the east African rift valley, a new United Nations climate report on April 4 brought the continent's vast clean energy potential into the spotlight.

Rhino poaching in South Africa was 15 percent higher in 2021 than the preceding year as coronavirus restrictions that limited movement were eased, official figures showed on Feb. 8.

A total of 451 animals were killed in 2021, which is still 24 percent lower than the pre-pandemic year 2019, the country's environment department reported.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will keep financial sectors of seven countries, including Turkey, under spotlight this year, the global crisis lender said in a blog post on Feb. 4.