Africa News

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Diplomatic wrangling dashed hopes for an end to the killing and rape in Darfur this year and a new UN-backed peacekeeping mission scheduled to start on January 1 faces an uphill struggle.

CAIRO (AFP) - In a potential blow to themed resorts from Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Mauritanian authorities said they were searching Tuesday for three men suspected of links with a local terror network in connection with the fatal shooting of four picnicking French tourists.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AFP) - Egyptian rescue workers on Tuesday pulled a young woman from the rubble of a block of flats that collapsed in the port city of Alexandria as the death toll from the disaster rose to 12.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI issued a Christmas Day appeal Tuesday to political leaders around the globe to find the "wisdom and courage" to end bloody conflicts in Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo.

LUXOR (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Egypt on Tuesday for a private holiday accompanied by his new girlfriend, former supermodel Carla Bruni.

ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Dozens of Palestinian security men affiliated to Fatah staged a mass break-out on Tuesday from the camp where they have been held in the Egyptian town of Rafah, security sources said.

KANO, Nigeria - A judge in Nigeria has ordered the arrest of three top officials of the U.S.-based drug company Pfizer Inc., saying they failed to honor an order to appear in court over a $2 billion suit the company is facing for a 1996 drug trial, court papers showed.

CAIRO (Reuters) - The death toll from the collapse of a 12-storey residential building in Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria rose to 11 on Tuesday after authorities dug six more bodies out of the ruins, security sources said.

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabweans desperate to get their hands on scarce local currency spent Tuesday lining up by cash dispensing machines after plans for banks to open on Christmas Day were scrapped.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AFP) - Rescue workers pulled three more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed block of flats in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria overnight, bringing the toll to eight dead with many still missing, a security source said on Tuesday.

KANO (AFP) - A Nigerian state court Monday issued an arrest warrant for three Pfizer Inc. group staffers who allegedly defied a summons and failed to appear in court for hearings of a case against the US drugs company for an alleged illegal clinical trial.

AL-FASHER, Sudan (AFP) - African Union chief Alpha Omar Konare launched an appeal Monday to all those involved in the Darfur conflict to help the deployment of a new hybrid AU-UN force as he visited the ravaged region.

KIGALI (AFP) - Rwandan companies using the country's famous mountain gorillas' image for marketing purposes will have to pay a tax aimed at financing the endangered species protection, officials announced Monday.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Fighting in eastern Congo this month has led to a surge in child abductions by armed groups who force minors to fight, carry ammunition or become their sex slaves, Save the Children said on Monday.

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - A Nigerian court on Monday ordered the arrests of three of the defendants in a trial over a drug test conducted by Pfizer in 1996 which Nigerian authorities say killed 11 children and left others disabled.

MASISI, Congo - The war is visible in the graying hair and shrunken arms of hungry children whose parents have fled fighting as many as six times this year alone.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Thousands of Zimbabweans waited for hours to get scarce currency from the banks so they could buy food and board buses on Monday for Christmas trips to their home villages.

JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - Militias supported by Khartoum's army have attacked southern Sudanese soldiers near the north-south border killing dozens of people, southern army officials said on Monday.

MOGADISHU (AFP) - A second batch of around 100 Burundian soldiers arrived in the Somali capital on Monday to join other African Union peacekeepers trying to stabilise the war-torn country, an AU official said.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Burundi deployed a second contingent of 92 peacekeepers to the Somali capital on Monday, to bolster an African Union force struggling to stem violence in the turbulent Horn of Africa nation.

ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - The Ethiopian government said Monday it was banking on an eight percent growth in coffee harvests for the coming season.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan sent officials to Malawi and summoned its ambassador to save diplomatic relations amid reports arch-rival China was aggressively courting the southern African nation, a government spokeswoman said on Monday.

KINSHASA, Congo — Boys and girls are being recruited in record numbers to act as soldiers, spies and sex slaves in Congo and children have been spotted marching in formation in the war-wracked east of the country over the past week, international charity Save the Children said Monday.

CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian man held in the Philippines for allegedly plotting a Christmas bomb attack is an envoy of Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning who was arrested by mistake, the insitution's grand imam said on Sunday.

POLOKWANE, South Africa (AFP) - Some call it brainless, others inappropriate in the post-apartheid era but Jacob Zuma, the new leader of South Africa's ANC, is in no mood to stop singing his "Machinegun" signature tune.

BLANTYRE (AFP) - Malawi, which once had strong diplomatic ties with Libya, has told the north African nation to close its mission in Lilongwe as it was no longer necessary, media reports said Sunday.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, the newly elected leader of South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Sunday that he would look at inflation targeting, a key monetary policy tool used by the Central Bank to reign in inflation.

LAGOS (AFP) - Despite being the world's eighth petroleum exporter and sitting on huge gas reserves, Nigeria will not have it easy over the next two years, between peristent unrest in the Niger Delta and strained relations with the major oil companies.