The Nigerian novelist Chukwuemeka Vincent Ike, who was also a monarch, has passed on at 88. He had endured health challenges, Punch reports, and was admitted to Nnamdi Azikiwe Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, where he died on Thursday, January 9. He had been, since 2008, the traditional ruler of Ndikelionwu town in Anambra State. Ike broke out internationally with the novel Toads for Supper (1965), but is as known for his subsequent novels The Naked Gods...

Cardi B’s announcement that she wants to seek Nigerian citizenship has set off a Twitter feud between her West African fans in friendly rivals Nigeria and Ghana. The Grammy-winning rapper visited both countries last month on her African tour. Her announcement in a tweet on Friday criticized the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and sent Middle East tensions soaring. “Its sad this man is putting Americans live in danger. Dumbest...

The Pentagon said Thursday that the U.S. military has killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, at the direction of President Donald Trump. An airstrike killed Soleimani, architect of Iran’s regional security apparatus, at Baghdad’s international airport Friday, Iranian state television and three Iraqi officials said, an attack that’s expected to draw severe Iranian retaliation against Israel and American interests. The Defense Department said Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack...

A plane crashed shortly after takeoff near Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Friday, killing at least 12 of the 98 people on board. Kazakh officials say another 54 people were hospitalized with injuries, The Associated Press reports, 10 of them in critical condition. The captain was among those killed. The plane was a Dutch-built Fokker 100 aircraft operated by Bek Air, which bills itself as Kazakhstan’s first low-cost carrier. The manufacturer went bankrupt in 1996. The aircraft...