Africa | featured news

Egypt's government has frozen a decision requiring tourists and other visitors to apply for visas before arrival in the country, an Egyptian tourism official said Sunday.

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An overloaded ferry capsized off east Africa as it sailed from Zanzibar to Pemba island. It was Tanzania’s worst maritime disaster in at least 15 years.

Hundreds of Egyptians stormed the building housing Israel's mission in Cairo and threw embassy documents and its national flag from windows, while airport sources said on Saturday that Israel's envoy was set to fly out of the country.

Thousands of Egyptians converged on Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday to demand reforms in a turnout dubbed "correcting the path of the revolution."

As Interpol issued arrest warrants for the fugitive Libyan autocrat Col. Muammar Qaddafi and two others on Friday, reports came from Niger of a new convoy of high-ranking Libyan officials arriving across the desert.

Sitting on a carpet under the shade of a tree, the men say they know where Moammar Gaddafi is today — and where he will always be. “He is in our hearts,” they say, almost in unison, tapping their chests with their right hands. Two weeks ago, almost every house in the town of Ajaylat, a Gaddafi stronghold about 50 miles west of Tripoli, flew the green flag of the autocrat’s regime. Today, those flags have been taken down, but the rebels’ red, black and green banner flies over only a handful of government buildings.

An analysis of 2 million-year-old bones found in South Africa offers the most powerful case so far in identifying the transitional figure that came before modern humans - findings some are calling a potential game-changer in understanding evolution....

Scores of Libyan army vehicles have crossed the desert frontier into Niger in what may be a dramatic, secretly negotiated bid by Muammar Gaddafi to seek refuge in a friendly African state, military sources from France and Niger told Reuters on Tuesday.

Chinese arms firms offered to sell weapons worth about $200 million to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's beleaguered forces in July, two newspapers reported, compounding pressure on Beijing's brittle ties with the rebels who have ousted him.

"Negotiations are over, and we are waiting for orders" to attack, said Mohammed al-Fassi, a rebel commander at a staging area about 45 miles from Bani Walid.