Threats, name-calling and a whole lot of dramatic posturing: talks among four fractious parties to form a new government under German Chancellor Angela Merkel have proved more fiery than fruitful so far. September’s inconclusive general election left the camps, which span the political spectrum, scrambling to form a stable government under Merkel, with the outcome of negotiations highly uncertain. “We …

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has rejected the result of the presidential election rerun of 26 October, which gave a landslide victory to President Uhuru Kenyatta. The veteran politician has vowed to challenge the legitimacy of Kenyatta’s presidency. Sekou Toure Otondi of the University of Nairobi argues that Odinga’s resistance to the government could in the long run benefit democratic development …

The German government has admitted that it does not always know the whereabouts of rejected asylum seekers, but argues that the number doesn’t tell the whole truth. The government’s asylum agency faces a file backlog. Ben Knight reports. Around 30,000 rejected asylum seekers have simply disappeared from Germany’s records, a German newspaper has claimed, though the government and refugee organizations …