At least 11 people have been killed by cattle rustlers during an ambush in northern Kenya, police said. Eight officers, two civilians and a local chief are said to be among the victims of the violence in Turkana County on Saturday. Members of the National Police Service were pursuing bandits who had earlier raided a village and stolen livestock.  Clashes over livestock and water are common in the area, which is also facing a worsening climate. The area has been one of the hardest hit in one of the harshest droughts East Africa has seen in four decades. A fourth season of failed rains has resulted in large numbers of livestock dying and crops failing to grow. People are desperate for food and water, and the UN’s World Food Programme said up to 20 million people in East Africa are at risk of severe hunger. Kenya’s police called the attack a “criminal and cowardly ambush” on “innocent members of the public and police”.(BBC)…[+]

A fourth man has been arrested following a reported plot to kidnap the Belgian justice minister. The suspect, a 21-year-old Dutch man, was detained by police in the Netherlands, according to the National Public Prosecutor’s Office. Three other Dutch men were also arrested in Holland on Friday night. It comes after a car containing firearms was found outside Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne’s home earlier this week. The minister has since been placed under tighter police surveillance after a “serious threat”, federal prosecutors said Saturday. They said they were “informed last week of a possible threat” to the politician’s safety, which had been taken very “seriously”, and launched an investigation. However, the exact details of the threat was remain unclear. It is widely reported it was an attempted kidnapping, with some Belgian media linking the plot to drug criminals. The prosecutor’s office has not confirmed these details.(BBC)…[+]

Planned concerts in Poland by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters have been cancelled amid outrage over the musician’s stance on the Ukraine war. The concert’s promoter, Live Nation Poland, confirmed the cancellation but gave no reason for it. The controversy was triggered by an open letter Waters wrote to Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska. In it, he said, “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine “have set your country on the path to this disastrous war”. He accused her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, of failing to fulfil his election campaign promises to bring peace to the Donbas region and and made no mention of Russia’s responsibility for the war. In response, Mrs Zelenska wrote on Twitter that it was Russia which invaded Ukraine and was now destroying its cities and killing civilians. “Roger Waters, you should ask for peace from the president of another country,” she wrote. Mr Water’s open letter led Łukasz Wantuch, a Krakow city councillor, to urge people to boycott the concerts. City councillors have drafted a resolution to declare Mr Waters persona non grata, due to be voted on at a session on September 28.(BBC)…[+]