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Antananarivo - Counting began on Friday in Madagascar's presidential election, which voters hope will encourage investors and donors to return to the Indian Ocean island, four years after a coup sent its economy reeling. Madagascar, famed for its wildlife and eyed by foreign firms for its minerals, has struggled to lure back tourists and court oil and mining giants since street protests and mutinous troops swept former disc jockey Andry Rajoelina into power in 2009. The economy has slumped and poverty has deepened. "The vote was an opportunity to show how fed up we had become," said English teacher Lorette Rasoafara as the tallying started, adding she had voted for a new political face. "If you wanted to go back in time you voted for the old guard." It could be more than a week before the election result is clear. There are no exit polls and while partial results were expected to trickle in overnight, the electoral commission (Cenit) has until 8 November to ...

Antananarivo - Counting began on Friday in Madagascar's presidential election, which voters hope will encourage investors and donors to return to the Indian Ocean island, four years after a coup sent its economy reeling. Madagascar, famed for its wildlife and eyed by foreign firms for its minerals, has struggled to lure back tourists and court oil and mining giants since street protests and mutinous troops swept former disc jockey Andry Rajoelina into power in 2009. The economy has slumped and poverty has deepened. "The vote was an opportunity to show how fed up we had become," said English teacher Lorette Rasoafara as the tallying started, adding she had voted for a new political face. "If you wanted to go back in time you voted for the old guard." It could be more than a week before the election result is clear. There are no exit polls and while partial results were expected to trickle in overnight, the electoral commission (Cenit) has until 8 November to ...

Two European men have been burnt to death in Madagascar by protesters who suspected they were trafficking human organs after a child went missing. A local man had been arrested in connection with the disappearance on Wednesday on Nosy Be, a tourist island resort in Madagascar's north-west. A crowd then rioted outside the police station believing him to have been paid to remove the child's organs. The mob proceeded on "a manhunt" for the foreigners, police said. "It resulted in the death of two foreigners," the deputy commander of the paramilitary police, Gen Guy Randriamaro Bobin, told the AFP news agency. Officials initially said they were French nationals, but residents on Nosy Be say one of the men may have been Italian. "Two foreigners died, we have confirmed that one of them was French," AFP quotes France's foreign affairs spokesman Philippe Lalliot as saying. Gen Randriamaro Bobin said an eight-year-old boy's lifeless body was ...