Reuters

Countries from east to west Africa have seen Islamist militant groups take over large swathes of territory, displacing millions, eroding faith in democratic government and causing widespread hunger.

A wealthy Nigerian politician and his family plotted to bring a street trader from Nigeria to Britain and pay him a few thousand pounds to donate his kidney for a transplant for his ill daughter, a British prosecutor told a London court on Monday.

Serame said Botswana wanted to raise its 2023/24 infrastructure spending to "unlock constraints to economic growth".

It also sought a new "Pact for Africa" to help investment, education, training, business and jobs around the world's poorest continent.

On Sunday, David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskiy's parliamentary bloc, said Reznikov would be transferred to another ministerial job, but on Monday he wrote that "there will be no personnel changes in the defence sector this week."

North Korea stole more cryptocurrency assets in 2022 than in any other year and targeted the networks of foreign aerospace and defense companies, according to a currently confidential United Nations report seen by Reuters on Monday.

In a similar message to Assad, Putin said Russia shared "the sadness and pain of those who lost their loved ones" and said Russia was ready to provide help.

Nigerians go to the polls on Feb. 25 to elect a new president, with three frontrunners promising to deal with the rising cost of living, insecurity and a slow-growing economy.

Western leaders have repeatedly criticised China for delaying developing country debt restructurings, which it disputes.

Russian troops are also trying to capture the coal mining city of Vuhledar, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) southwest of Bakhmut, also in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Alieu Kosiah, who fought in the 1990s against then-President Charles Taylor's army, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2021 for rape, murder and cannibalism in the West African country's first war crimes trial.

Fighters from a rebel group on Thursday killed six people from a herding community in Central Equatoria state.

Kimani, his client Josephat Mwendwa and their driver Joseph Muiruri were killed shortly after filing a complaint of police brutality alleging that Mwendwa had been shot and injured by police.

Government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and opposition forces that back First Vice President Riek Machar signed a deal in 2018 that committed the two sides to sharing power and forming a unified national military.

The speech was interrupted so often by applause and cheers that an organiser took a microphone and shouted "let the pope speak" before he could continue.

Tunisia has been pushing for years for an international bailout to help it stave off bankruptcy, but the country's political turmoil and disputes over economic reforms have thwarted those efforts.

Wallace did not rule out the possibility of sending jets but said fighter aircraft were not what Ukraine needed right now and that there were practical issues to consider, such as the many months it would take to train Ukrainian forces to use them.

The countrywide exercise is part of a response to plans by the European Union to ban imports of commodities and products linked to deforestation and rights abuses by 2024.

They held up placards, including some demanding that the pope meet with clergy abuse victims in the country.

Senior members of the EU's executive met their counterparts in the Ukrainian government, and von der Leyen and the chairman of the 27 EU national leaders, Charles Michel, will convene talks with Zelenskiy on Friday.

Nigeria has faced oil production shortages due to crude theft in recent years, though production has started to recover.

Deby inaugurated the embassy in Ramat Gan, a town abutting Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.

Same-sex relations are illegal or taboo in many socially conservative African countries, including in South Sudan which the pope will visit after Congo.

The cryptocurrency market floundered in 2022, as risk appetite diminished and various crypto firms collapsed.

Deby announced the plan on Wednesday as he began a visit to Israel. An Israeli official said the Muslim-majority African country's embassy would be in the Tel Aviv area.

The UGTT, which has more than one million members, said police detained Anis Kaabi, the general secretary of the union's highways branch, at his home late on Tuesday.

The board said the final version of the course, released on the first day of Black History Month in the United States, had been under development for nearly a year, reflected input from hundreds of experts, and did not bend to anyone's political will.

Zelenskiy said that allowing Russia to compete at the 2024 Games would be tantamount to showing that "terror is somehow acceptable".

Struggling state utility Eskom has implemented power cuts every day this year, after a record number of days with outages last year.