Africa News

It's the Mideast version of a sordid soap opera. A Lebanese pop star is brutally murdered in her luxury Dubai apartment, her throat slashed. Arrested in her death: One of Egypt's most politically connected businessmen, accused of paying $2 million to have her killed.

The slaying of Suzanne Tamim has gone beyond a lurid crime story to something more serious _ a glimpse into the close links between Egypt's government and powerful business tycoons long viewed as above the law.

It is also exposing strains between societies like Egypt's, where wealth and political power increasingly go hand in hand, and Dubai, which recently launched a high-profile push against corruption.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she's excited about a landmark trip she will make to Libya on Friday, becoming the highest-ranking American official to visit the North African country in more than a ...

By Henrique Almeida

LUANDA (Reuters) - Angolans began voting on Friday in a parliamentary election expected to extend the ruling party's more than three-decade rule in the booming oil-rich African nation.

The poll is the first to be held in Angola since 1992 and is seen largely as a race between the governing MPLA and former rebel group UNITA. Results are not expected to be released for at least a week.

Local media and observers reported long lines of voters at polling stations in the capital Luanda, considered a stronghold of the MPLA. More than 8 million people are registered to vote throughout the country.

Sep. 4 - US Secretary of State Rice makes a landmark trip to Libya, the first by a U.S. Secretary of State in more than half a century.

Thousands of Ethiopians on Thursday cheered the long-awaited restoration of the 1,700-year-old Axum obelisk to its original site in the country's north.

Swaziland and its king are throwing a joint 40th birthday bash this weekend, but the mood is far from celebratory in this small southern African land of paupers and princes, mud huts and palaces.

Sudanese forces accused of killing more than 30 people in a raid on a Darfur camp have started to build up their position outside the settlement, raising fears of a new attack, peacekeepers said on Wednesday.

" Wildfires are common in southern Africa at the end of the dry winter season. At the weekend, the fires were fanned by winds reaching gale force in coastal and mountainous areas." Johannesburg/Maputo, Sep 3 - ...

What are vegetarians supposed to do on national braai day later this month? "They can stand and watch," said Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday, as he poked a large steak with his braai tongs.

A Canadian aid worker remembered for his professional expertise and engaging personality was among the 17 victims of a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a spokeswoman for his employer said ...

Sep 3 - Residents in Kenya's Rift Valley celebrate the area's first ever snowfall with snow ball fights and a day off work and school.

Mortar shells slammed into Somalia's capital on Wednesday as insurgents vowed to intensify attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Somalia already sees near-daily explosions of bloodshed, and thousands of Somalis _ most of them civilians _ have been killed since Islamic fighters began an Iraq-style insurgency in December 2006, after they were driven from power in Mogadishu and much of the south.

At least two people were killed early Wednesday, said Abdiqadir Hassan Hussein, a Mogadishu resident who witnessed some of the fighting and saw two people killed, a death toll that is expected to rise. Both sides exchanged mortar and heavy machine-gun fire in a two-hour battle, forcing terrified residents to cower in their homes.

GENEVA * Two domestic workers who filed assault charges against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's son in Switzerland, sparking a diplomatic row, have withdrawn their complaint, their Swiss lawyer said yesterday.

A U.S. documentary filmmaker was arrested along with his translator and accused of spying after he filmed soldiers in Nigeria's troubled oil region, a military spokesman and media rights organization said ...

DAR ES SALAAM - African Union chair Tanzania wants to see a 50-50 power-sharing deal agreed for Zimbabwe immediately to stem a growing economic crisis, Tanzania's foreign minister said on ...

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. diplomat Condoleezza Rice will make a landmark trip to Libya this week, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in more than half a century, the State Department announced on Tuesday.

Her trip is a tangible sign of warming U.S.-Libya relations, which first began to thaw when Tripoli gave up its weapons of mass destruction program in 2003.

"It is a historic stop," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "It certainly does mark a new chapter in U.S.-Libya relations."

South Africa and Venezuela sealed a major oil deal Tuesday during a visit by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who touted it as an example of southern nations cooperating in a new strategic alliance.

A humanitarian plane carrying 17 people -- most of them relief workers -- has crashed during a storm in a mountainous region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said Tuesday.

South Africans who believe in a conspiracy theory that HIV was introduced by white people as a way of controlling the black population are significantly less likely to have had an HIV test, according to a study ...

BAIDOA, Somalia: Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein survived a no-confidence vote on Monday.