The Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is famed for its endangered species like mountain gorillas.

Rangers working there face constant violence from armed groups and poachers.

They've recently paid tribute to six of their colleagues who were killed on Monday in one of the deadliest ambushes in the park.

Park director Emmanuel de Merode told BBC Newsday he believes rebels from the Mai-Mai Charles militant group are responsible for the killings:

Listen to the interview in full below:

Wycliffe Kinyamal has won Kenya’s first gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in the final of the men’s 800 metres.

Defending champion Nijel Amos of Botswana, who beat David Rudisha four years ago, went from second to last place in the home stretch.

Image source, AFP

South Africa’s Ndodomzi Ntutu has won the Men’s T12 100m gold ahead of his compatriot Hilton Langenhoven at the Commonwealth Games in Australia.

They clocked 11:02 and 11:27 seconds respectively.

Image source, Getty Images

Farmers around Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, say they are paying a high price for the expansion of the city.

They say they are facing economic hardship because the support they were promised following their eviction has not been forthcoming.

Grievances over land have been central to recent protests in the region.

Video Producers: Charlie Northcott, Habtamu Tibebu and Yadeta Berhanu

Pumza Fihlani
BBC News, Johannesburg

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A documentary detailing Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's role in bringing down South Africa's apartheid government has many in South Africa raw with emotion.

Winnie, made by French director Pascale Lamche, was aired last night on satellite TV channel eNCA. It has been trending on social media, with many expressing heartbreak at how the "ANC (African National Congress) failed Mam Winnie".

It is a marked departure from the narrative which has dominated local and international media in the past, and even after Ms Madikizela-Mandela’s death on 2 April, of a power hungry, villainous woman.

Image source, AFP

The film shows a woman who was overlooked by history and betrayed by many she trusted. It includes exclusive interview footage of Ms Madikizela-Mandela speaking about key moments in her downfall.

She addresses the death of Stompei Seipei, a 14-year-old boy kidnapped by her bodyguards, whose subsequent killing she repeatedly denied any involvement in.

Ms Madikizela-Mandela also says that ANC leaders sold her out at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to neutralise her power, when they surrendered her as the only member of the party to defend her actions during the fight against apartheid.

We also see explosive confessions by former heads of apartheid security police, admitting they had 40 journalists on their payroll and used them to spread misinformation about Ms Madikizela-Mandela in a convert mission known as Stratcom.

For many the documentary answers a lingering question many South Africans had: Why could Nelson Mandela forgive his oppressors and not his wife for her indiscretions?

The film alleges that when Mr Mandela was fresh out of prison and the presidency beckoned, he was given an ultimatum by the ANC leadership to "divorce Winnie or lose the presidency".

Perhaps this was the ultimate betrayal for Ms Madikizela-Mandela.

Here are a sample of views on Twitter about the documentary:

Image source, AFP

Nigeria's south-eastern Anambra State has announced that a bunker used by pro-Biafran secessionist leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu during the civil war in the 1960s will be turned into a tourist site.

Caves and a waterfalls in the state would also be turned into major tourist sites.

“These tourist centres will receive immediate attention with the construction of access roads to them as well as concrete footpaths that will lead into the bowels of the caves to make them easily accessible,” a spokesman for state governor Willie Obiano said.

The move is seen as an attempt to boost employment and income in a region where there is much poverty.

Ojukwu declared the formation of the breakaway state of Biafra in 1967, triggering a civil war in which more than one million people died.

He remains popular among many people in the south-east, who complain of economic and political marginalisation.

Judges in France who annulled an Algerian immigrant's marriage to a French woman say they knew it was a sham because the groom "hardly smiled" in the wedding photos, the UK-based Times newspaper reports, external.

It says the judgment was handed down in 2010 by Aix-en-Provence appeals court in south France, but has only now been made public after the bride overcame her family's reluctance to talk about it.

"It took eight years to digest because it was a form of disgrace," the woman's lawyer is reported in French media as saying.

"But she wanted to contact the media to alert other women so they can avoid falling into the same trap."

The woman, a 48-year-old accountant of Algerian origin living in France's second-biggest city Marseille, said she had fallen in love with the man when he was working on a building site near her office. He was eight years her junior.

She is quoted in a local newspaper (in French), external as saying his behaviour towards her suddenly became hostile after the wedding.

Her lawyer said her client was "committed to the marriage but he wasn't - he only wanted a visa".

Image source, AFP

Patience Atuhaire
BBC Africa, Kampala

Image source, AFP

Three lionesses and their eight cubs have been found dead in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park.

The lions are suspected to have been fed poisoned meat, the Uganda Wildlife Authority said.

The reason is unclear, and an investigation has been launched.

The carcasses were discovered on Wednesday near a fishing village, a spokesperson told the BBC.

They did not seem to have any physical injuries.

Wildlife and Tourism Minister Ephraim Kamuntu will travel to the park later today to find out more about the incident.

The lion population in Queen Elizabeth National Park numbers around 100.

Uganda’s wildlife parks are one of the country’s most important sources of revenue, and the government is trying to boost tourism.

The country celebrated Wildlife Day last month, with a renewed commitment to protecting the big cats.

South African authorities say a businessman who was filmed confronting one of the Gupta brothers in Dubai has been released by the authorities there.

South African businessman Justin van Pletzen was detained for questioning in Dubai after a video circulated showing him asking Ajay Gupta - who is officially a "fugitive from justice" in South Africa - when he will return.

"When are you going back to South Africa? The country is looking for you," Mr van Pletzen says in the video filmed outside the South African embassy in Dubai earlier this month.

The wealthy Gupta family have been accused of using their close friendship with South Africa's former President Zuma to wield enormous political influence, and to win state contracts. The Guptas and Mr Zuma deny all allegations of wrongdoing.

Tomi Oladipo
BBC Africa security correspondent

A German aid worker has been abducted in the west of Niger near the border with Mali.

Officials say the man and his colleagues were travelling on Wednesday when gunmen on motorcycles stopped them, and burnt their vehicle.

It is not immediately clear who was behind the abduction and whether the German's colleagues were also seized.

So far, the kidnappers have not made any demands.

The German national is reported to have been working for the aid group Help.

He was seized near Ayorou, in Tillaberi. It is a dangerous part of Niger where militant Islamists regularly target the army. Four US soldiers were also killed there last October.

BBC World Service

The UN says it will continue an operation to clear criminal gangs from a district of the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, despite angry protests.

On Wednesday, demonstrators deposited 17 bodies in front of the UN mission in Bangui, claiming they were innocent civilians.

But a UN spokesman, Vladimir Monteiro, told the BBC that the dead were criminals who'd been targeting peacekeepers and government soldiers.

He said the UN was responding to appeals for action against the gangs from residents of the mainly-Muslim PK5 district.

Leading rights group Amnesty International has hailed sub-Saharan Africa as "a beacon of hope" in the campaign to abolish the death penalty.

"Sub-Saharan Africa made great strides in the global fight to abolish the death penalty with a significant decrease in death sentences being imposed across the region," it said in a report published today.

Its stance contributed to a decline in executions around the world, where nearly 1,000 executions took place last year, four percent fewer than a year earlier, Amnesty International said.

Last year, Guinea became the 20th state in sub-Saharan Africa abolish the death penalty for all crimes, while Kenya abolished the mandatory death penalty for murder.

Burkina Faso and Chad also took steps to repeal this punishment with new or proposed laws.

“The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition. The leadership of countries in this region gives fresh hope that the abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is within reach,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Salil Shetty.

The organization recorded a drop in the number of executing countries across sub-Saharan Africa, from five in 2016 to two in 2017, with only South Sudan and Somalia known to have carried out executions.

While Botswana and Sudan resumed executions in 2018, this "must not overshadow the positive steps being taken by other countries across the region", Amnesty International said.

"Elsewhere in Africa, Gambia signed an international treaty committing the country not to carry out executions and moving to abolish the death penalty. The Gambian President established an official moratorium on executions in February 2018," it added.

BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

Researchers have found that a new kind of mosquito net substantially increases protection against malaria-carrying insects.

The discovery was made by a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in a two-year study involving more than 15,000 children in Tanzania.

Scientists found that nets incorporating a chemical called piperonyl butoxide blocked the natural defences of mosquitoes against standard insecticides, reducing malaria cases by more than a third.

The World Health Organization is now recommending the use of the new nets.

Malaria causes well over 400,000 deaths a year, nearly all of them children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our African proverb of the day:

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Click here and scroll to the bottom to send in your African proverbs.

Welcome to BBC Africa Live, where we resume our coverage of the latest news and views from around the continent.

That's all from BBC Africa Live today. Keep up-to-date with what's happening across the continent by listening to the Africa Today podcast or check the BBC News website.

A reminder of today's wise words:

And we leave you with this bird's-eye view of the port of Berbera in the self-declared republic of Somaliland:

President Muhammadu Buhari, who is in the UK on an official visit, has defended his decision to seek re-election next year, saying he wanted to end speculation so he could concentrate on his job.

He made the comments to the Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who called on Mr Buhari earlier today, a presidential statement said.

He also defended his record, saying his administration had cut "the importation of rice by about 90%, saving billions of dollars in the process”.

The 75-year-old added:

President Buhari blamed the recent herders crisis on the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who he said trained and armed them.

A rights group in Nigeria said this week that more than 2,000 people had been killed in recent violence between farmers and nomadic herdsmen.

Image source, Shutterstock

Mauritius has frozen bank accounts linked to Angola's "people's fund" scandal, Reuters news agency reports.

A BBC investigation revealed in November that an entrepreneur charged with managing Angola's oil wealth was paid more than $41m (£29m) through companies set up in Mauritius.

Jean-Claude Bastos, a Swiss-Angolan and close friend of the then-president's son, was the Angolan sovereign wealth fund's asset manager.

Reuters says that, following a Mauritius Supreme Court ruling yesterday, their Financial Services Commission suspended the licences for seven funds and froze 25 of its bank accounts for Mr Bastos' Quantum Global Investment Management.

On Monday, the Mauritian newspaper Le Mauricien reported that a further 33 bank accounts had been frozen, bringing the total to 58.

In a statement, Quantum Global said it was co-operating with the relevant authorities.

"We remain confident and resolute in our ability to defend ourselves vigorously against the unwarranted attacks on our reputation," Quantum said.

Read more in the so-called Paradise Papers, the leak of financial documents that threw light on the world of offshore finance.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal really has spread across the world, including to Ghana.

Ghanaian Facebook user Reuben Griffiths Bekoe has told BBC Focus on Africa that the social media company informed him that his personal information was compromised when a Facebook friend used the "This is Your Digital Life" app linked to Cambridge Analytica.

It is claimed that information gathered from Facebook users was used by the data analysis company to psychologically profile US voters.

Facebook says information was gathered from 87 million people.

Mr Bekoe says he's worried the information harvested from him could include his private chats with voters about their preferred candidates during Ghana's recent election, private chats about a relative with cancer and personal phone numbers.

Tune into the World Service to listen to Akwasi Sarpong's interview on Focus on Africa Radio in a few minutes.

In the meantime, here's a reminder how the whole scandal unraveled:

Image source, Getty Images

A South African woman accused of faking illness by UK immigration officials to avoid being put on a deportation plane died five days later, the Guardian newpaper reports, external.

Nancy Motsamai and her husband Fusi had been in the UK for more than 10 years, but "ran into difficulties" when they applied to renew their visas, the newspaper says.

On 7 March they were told they were to be forcibly removed from the UK that day.

Mr Motsamai told the Guardian that when they were taken to Heathrow Airport his wife collapsed in the corridor:

He said officials then decided to put the couple into detention instead.

Mrs Motsamai told her husband that a nurse said she was too ill to be detained, but the medic was overruled by a superior and they spent the night in the detention centre.

The next morning both of them were released, but she collapsed and died of a pulmonary embolism five days later in the UK on 12 March.

The UK Home Office has referred the case to the independent prisons and probation ombudsman for investigation, the Guardian says.