Jack Kim

Africa is starting to appear on the radar screens of western retailers as they look for the next growth opportunity in emerging markets while having to cope with subdued consumer spending at home.

Egypt's parliamentary election will start on November 28, a military source said on Tuesday, launching the process of handing back power to civilian rule nine months after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising.

Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata, a critic of Chinese investment, was sworn in as president on Friday after an upset poll victory that ushered in a smooth handover of power in Africa's biggest copper producer.

Zambians voted on Tuesday in a closely contested election between President Rupiah Banda and opposition leader Michael Sata, who has been a critic of foreign investment in Africa's biggest copper producer, most notably from China.

Seventeen foreign mercenaries which Muammar Gaddafi's spokesman said had been captured, including French and British personnel, were being questioned in the Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid in Libya and will be shown publicly soon.

Libya's new flag flew at the United Nations on Tuesday for the first time since Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow as U.S. President Barack Obama called for the last of the deposed leader's loyalists to stop fighting.

The African Union (AU) recognised the National Transitional Council (NTC) as Libya's de facto government on Tuesday, removing another piece of diplomatic support for ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.

South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) delayed presenting to parliament a widely criticised state-secrecy bill that makes the jailing of whistleblowers legal, lawmakers said on Monday.

Ugandan legislators want the speaker to call an emergency session of the house to discuss a government dispute with Britain's Heritage Oil over tax payments, an opposition MP said on Monday.

Madagascar will arrest exiled former president Marc Ravalomanana if he returns to the Indian Ocean island, a senior cabinet minister said a day after signing a road map aimed at holding elections within a year.

Egypt approved on Monday the establishment of a party led by a former top official in Hosni Mubarak's now disbanded party and rejected another set up by an Islamist group, the committee charged with reviewing party applications said in a statement.

Gunmen have stormed a bar in Burundi killing at least 36 people, the deadliest attack in the Central African country this year that has heightened fears of a return to civil war.

Zambia's police chief deployed thousands of officers across the southern African country on Monday, the eve of a closely contested election between incumbent Rupiah Banda and nationalist opposition leader Michael Sata.

Arctic sea ice this summer melted to a record low extent or will come a close second, two different research institutes said on Tuesday, confirming a trend which could yield an ice-free summer within a decade.

Most French voters would like to see the opposition Socialist party win next year's presidential vote, a poll showed on Wednesday, dampening a summer revival by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Serbia warned the West on Tuesday that violence could flare if a plan to install Kosovo police and customs officers on the border with its breakaway former province goes ahead this week.

Israel's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip violates international law, a panel of human rights experts reporting to a U.N. body said on Tuesday, disputing a conclusion reached by a separate U.N. probe into Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship.

The number of Americans living below the poverty line rose to a record 46 million last year, the U.S. government said on Tuesday, underscoring the challenges facing President Barack Obama and Congress as they try to tackle high unemployment and a moribund economy.

New al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri voiced support in an Internet video for popular revolts shaking the Middle East, saying Arabs no longer feared the United States 10 years after the country was targeted by the militant network.

Taliban fighters fired rockets at the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on Tuesday and attacked police in three other areas in the biggest assault the insurgent group has mounted on the Afghan capital.

Egypt's former intelligence chief who was also briefly vice president, Omar Suleiman, began giving testimony on Tuesday at the trial of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, who is charged with conspiring to kill protesters, state television reported.

Somali security forces briefly detained two Turkish aid workers on Tuesday after they delivered food to famine victims in an area near the capital controlled by rebels, officials said on Tuesday.

Gunmen shot dead four people in a bar in the northeastern Nigerian town of Maiduguri in the latest strike by a radical Islamist sect, police said on Tuesday.

The World Bank on Tuesday said it officially recognized the ruling National Transitional Council as Libya's government and had been asked to help lead efforts to restore vital services and develop jobs programs as the country tries to return to normal after a six-month war.

Libyan transitional forces besieging a bastion of forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi on Tuesday gave residents two days to leave before a threatened onslaught, and fears rose for the fate of civilians trapped in the last redoubts of the fallen strongman.

South Africa's firebrand ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema was found guilty on Monday of hate speech for singing an apartheid-era song that called for the killing of white farmers.

At least 75 bodies have been recovered after petrol that had spilled into an open sewer caught fire and sent a wave of flame through a densely populated slum in the Kenyan capital, police said on Monday.

Libya's new rulers said they were holding back an assault on one of the last bastions loyal to Muammar Gaddafi but were edging towards the ousted ruler's birthplace of Sirte.

Sudanese security forces have banned an independent newspaper from publishing its entire Thursday edition, its editor said.