French and allied African forces launched a new offensive against Islamist rebels in northern Mali after a suicide attack on a checkpoint killed two Chadian soldiers.
Mauritania's opposition parties will boycott upcoming elections, seen as legitimizing a dictatorship, while a "Global Slavery Index" names the country as the world's worst offender.
Street clashes continued in the Sudanese capital Khartoum for a second day after massive protests broke out over the regime's move to cut fuel subsidies.
Amnesty International called upon UN members to demand Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir turn himself in to the International Criminal Court to face genocide charges.
A visit by a delegation of cabinet ministers from Mali’s central government to Kidal, the northern town held by Tuareg rebels of the MNLA, sparked a mini-intifada.
Canada-based Kinross Gold is said to be rethinking plans for expansion of its massive open-pit mine at Tasiast, Mauritania, after a strike shut the facility for 10 days this month.
Efforts by pastoralist militias to bar refugees from returning to their lands in Darfur have sparked yet a new wave of fighting and displacement—with 250,000 uprooted this year.
A UN mission formally took over from the African-led force in Mali—although most of the actual soldiers remain the same. France is to keep some 1,000 troops in the country.
Senegalese police detained former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre to face an African Union trial on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture.
A Malian government mission arrived in Kidal, stronghold of the separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), days after the signing of a ceasefire.
Mali’s government and the MNLA, at odds over whether army troops will be allowed into the rebels’ northern stronghold for upcoming elections, will resume talks in Burkina Faso.
Deputy commander of the JEM-Bashar rebel faction and international war crimes suspect Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus has reportedly been killed in Northern Darfur.
