AFP news

Freddy hit the southern African country earlier this week, triggering flooding and mudslides that swept away homes, roads and bridges.

Kramatorsk Mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko confirmed that two people had been killed by cluster bombs.

Governors are powerful positions in Nigeria, with some controlling state budgets larger than those of several African nations.

The agreement between Britain and Rwanda "will lead the way in finding a solution which is both humanitarian and compassionate and also fair and balanced", she added.

Beijing seeks to depict itself as a neutral party to the conflict, neither condemning nor explicitly supporting the Russian offensive.

Ousmane Sonko is being tried for allegedly defaming a minister, a case that could determine whether he will be eligible to run in presidential elections in February next year.

Regulators are increasingly keen for oversight of a sector which boomed during the Covid pandemic when many people were stuck at home.

The special forces aim to defend the nearby village of Grygorivka in the Donetsk region, about 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Bakhmut, which is coming under heavy Russian shelling.

Rescuers were unearthing more bodies as the chances of finding survivors faded after the cyclone followed a highly unusual course by returning to lash southern Africa's mainland a second time.

Speaking at a news conference in Pretoria during a state visit by Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Ramaphosa declared "disorder and anarchy will not be allowed."

Ousmane Sonko is being tried for allegedly defaming a minister, a case that could determine whether he will be eligible to run in presidential elections next February.

He is expected to announce more US support to Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, which returned to stability in 2011 after a history of coups.

While FIFA statutes currently limit a president to a maximum of three four-year terms, Infantino has already prepared the ground to stay until 2031, declaring in December that his first three years at the helm did not count as a full term.

France and Russia have long been wrestling for influence in CAR, a country wracked by poverty and plagued by a nearly decade-long civil conflict.

One state in particular is set to stand out: Lagos, the buzzing coastal home of some 20 million people and economic nerve centre of the country and region.

The US on Tuesday accused Russia of forcing down one of its Reaper surveillance drones over the Black Sea through a collision with a Russian Sukhoi-27 war plane.

The report said they were members of the Boko Haram jihadist group, who were fleeing their hideout in Sambisa forest in northeast Nigeria.

Weather conditions were expected to improve as the storm dissipated over land after days of torrential rains, but flood levels remained high in some areas hampering emergency efforts.

Blinken said he hoped to restore cooperation "with the goal of strengthening the relationship" with Ethiopia, home of the African Union, amid a push by President Joe Biden to deepen relations with Africa.

Blinken's trip to Africa's second most populous nation comes as part of a push by President Joe Biden's administration to step up engagement with Africa, where China and Russia have been stepping up influence.

Russia, a key arms exporter to Africa, is also making forays into the continent including through mining projects granted to the Wagner private paramilitary group, he said.

GPT-4 has been widely awaited ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late November, wowing users with its capabilities that were based on an older version of OpenAI's technology, known as a large language model.

International envoys as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo government say they want to give a chance to peace efforts for ending the insurgency by M23 rebels in North Kivu province.

Ninety-nine people have died in the impoverished country since Freddy smashed into southern Africa at the weekend, just weeks after it made a deady hit in late February, according to a provisional toll.

The new assembly was elected in two rounds in December and January, with a voter turnout of just over 11 percent.

At least 99 people have died in the southern African country, many of them in Chilobwe, a hillside settlement near Malawi's second-largest city, Blantyre.

The move marks the latest step towards reopening China to the outside world, as Beijing breaks with the strict zero-Covid strategy that defined its pandemic response until a few months ago.

Washington and Seoul have ramped up defence cooperation in the face of growing military and nuclear threats from the North, which has conducted a series of increasingly provocative banned weapons tests in recent months.

Freddy, on track to become the longest-lasting storm on record, barrelled through southern Africa at the weekend for the second time within a few weeks, making a comeback after a first hit in late February.