Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara has won a controversial third term in office in an election boycotted by the opposition. He took 94% of the vote, even winning 99% in some of his strongholds. Turnout was put at almost 54%. The result has to be confirmed by the Constitutional Council.  On Monday, the Ivorian opposition said it was creating a transitional government which would organise a new election.  Main opposition candidates Pascal Affi N’Guessan and Henri Konan Bédié had urged their supporters not to vote. They got 1% and 2% respectively, while a fourth candidate, Kouadio Konan Bertin, also got 2%, according to the official results.

A young white man has been jailed for 25 years for burning down three historic black churches in the US state of Louisiana last year. Heavy metal musician Holden Matthews, 23, was also ordered to pay $2.7m (£2.1m) in restitution. He said he had burnt the churches to boost his reputation within his favoured music scene.

A judge found the attacks had not been racially motivated but said they evoked memories of a “dark time in history.”

White supremacists attacked black churches during America’s civil rights era. The three churches Matthews burnt were St Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, between 26 March and 4 April. Matthews, the son of a local sheriff’s deputy, admitted to posting photographs and video on Facebook of the first two churches burning. All three buildings were razed to the ground by the fires, but no-one was injured because they were torched at night. A judge cleared him of hate crime charges, which Matthews admitted to earlier this year. But he was found guilty of three counts of arson on religious buildings, and one count of using fire to commit a federal felony.(BBC)…[+]

Austrian police have urged people to stay indoors as they hunt for suspects after a multiple gun attack in the capital Vienna that killed four people. A gunman shot dead by police has been identified as a 20-year-old “Islamist terrorist”. He was released early from jail in December. Seven of the 17 people wounded have life-threatening injuries. Gunmen opened fire at six locations in the city centre on Monday evening.

Two men and two women were shot dead. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the four victims were an elderly woman, an elderly man, a young male passer-by and a waitress. Witnesses described how the gunmen had opened fire on people outside bars and chased them as they fled inside. It was clearly an attack driven by “hatred of our way of life, our democracy”, the chancellor said. He earlier spoke of a “repulsive terror attack”. The nation was engaged not in a battle between Christians and Muslims, he stressed, but “between civilisation and barbarism“.(BBC)…[+]