Sri Lanka's former top general, Sarath Fonseka, will run against President Mahinda Rajapakse in a snap vote next year, a key opposition party says. The man credited with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers resigned last week after a rift with Rajapakse.
The Week in Africa looks at why there is a chance the Presidential election in Ivory Coast may be postponed once again, examines the humanitarian disaster in Mogadishu, and investigates diamond trafficking in Namibia.
Sudan is emerging from a long and brutal civil war between the north and south. This year, more than 1,200 people have been killed. To shed some light on this conflict, Sam Bell of the Genocide Intervention Network, is the guest of today's Focus.
In this edition: thousands of Shiite Lebanese are expelled from the UAE for refusing to rat on their compatriotes; civilians get caught in the crossfire in Yemen's civil war; students at a Cairo university are divided over a proposed niqab ban.
Islamist insurgents are holding two French security consultants after receiving them from armed gunmen linked to the government, police sources say. The two men, who were posing as reporters, were abducted Tuesday from a Mogadishu hotel.
Somalia's defence minister said on Wednesday that the two French officials abducted from their Mogadishu hotel yesterday were seized for monetary gain, and not for political reasons.
The French foreign ministry has identified two foreigners abducted in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Tuesday as French security advisers on a mission to train Somali government forces.
A Basque bishop on Saturday criticised the Roman Catholic Church's silence over the killing of 14 priests by General Franco's forces during Spain's 1936-39 civil war. Historians estimate half a million people died in the war.
The Somali capital, Mogadishu, has turned into a battle zone between Islamist insurgents and Somali troops, with African Union and AMISOM peacekeeping troops caught in the crossfire. FRANCE 24 followed one of their convoys.
It has been almost 20 years since the civil war in Somalia began, and hope for peace remains thin. Even while the African Union has sent troops to bring the peace to the region, the violence seems unlikely to end.
