ALGERIA

OPEC began negotiations on Monday on a new production deal aimed at healing the rift caused by a bad-tempered failure to agree an output target when it last met in June.

History will remember 2011 as the year of the popular uprising. The common man is creating history in different corners of the world. What else do the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street protests, the anti-austerity protests in Greece and Spain, and the anti-corruption campaign in India herald?

The economically insecure country of Portugal is seeking investment from its former colony, Angola.

Currency effects helped push Orascom Telecom to a net loss of $975,000 for the third quarter from a profit of $939 million a year earlier, the company said on Sunday.

One of al Qaeda's commanders in the Sahara has said the group profited from the Libyan conflict by securing weapons and he called on Islamists in Libya not to disarm.

A Tunisian court ruled on Tuesday that the man who served as prime minister under Libya's former leader Muammar Gaddafi should be extradited to Libya.

Fighters who toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Libya's uprising will keep their weapons for now to aid in security, an Islamist commander said.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will not escape justice and should be tried in Libya for murder, corruption and many things before an international court questions him, the country's interim justice minister said on Monday.

The International Criminal Court said on Saturday Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was in contact through intermediaries about surrendering for trial, but it also had information mercenaries were trying to spirit him to a friendly African nation.

Africa's new scramble for oil is heading east, where the potential could be huge but the risks are far higher than in the well-established sector on the continent's west coast.

A delegation from the Arab League, tasked with helping end the violence in Syria, met Wednesday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to facilitate the ceasefire demanded by the Arab nations in a resolution last week.

In a study, Morocco improved its business regulation the most compared to other global economies, climbing 21 places in the 183-country ranking to 94. Reasons cited for Morocco's ranking leap including simplifying the construction permitting process, easing the administrative burden of tax compliance, and providing greater protections to minority shareholders. Morocco has implemented 15 business regulatory reforms since 2005.

Moammar Gadhafi's fugitive son Saif al-Islam wants an aircraft to take him out of Libya's southern desert so that he can turn himself into The Hague war crimes court.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who once vowed to die fighting on Libyan soil, now wants to face international justice instead and avoid any chance of meeting the same grisly end as his father, Libyan officials said.

Moammar Gadhafi's son Saif al-Islam has said he wants to surrender to the International Criminal Court, which has indicted him for war crimes, Reuters reports.

Libya's interim leader urged NATO Wednesday to maintain its involvement in the country until the end of the year, though the Western military alliance that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi is keen to wind up its formal mission within days.

Muammar Gaddafi's fugitive son Saif al-Islam and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi are proposing to hand themselves into the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a senior Libyan military official with the National Transitional Council said on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of supporters of President Bashar al-Assad rallied in Damascus on Wednesday while his opponents staged strikes across Syria ahead of an Arab league mission aimed at bringing the two sides together for talks.

As Moammar Gadhafi's body is buried in the dessert under an unmarked grave, his son and one time heir Saif al-Islam Gadhafi is preparing to flee Libya, a member of the National Transitional Council has revealed.

Egypt's Citadel Capital plans to scale back investments outside its existing projects until the political and economic outlook becomes clearer, its chairman told Reuters.

Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mo'tassim were buried in a secret desert location on Tuesday, five days after the desposed Libyan leader was captured, killed and put on grisly public display.