Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Image source, Dr Stephen Buckley/ University of York

Examination of a mummy has revealed the original ancient Egyptian embalming recipe - first used to preserve bodies.

A battery of forensic chemical tests carried out on a mummy that dated from 3,700-3,500 BC revealed the recipe and confirmed that it was developed far earlier and used more widely than previously thought.

The Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, is now home to the mummy in question.

The findings are published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Dr Stephen Buckley, an archaeologist from the University of York, told BBC News that this mummy "literally embodies the embalming that was at the heart of Egyptian mummification for 4,000 years".

Dr Buckley and his colleagues worked out the chemical "fingerprint" of every ingredient, although each element could have come from a number of sources.

Click here to find out the recipe

Image source, AFP

Uganda's popular Afrobeats musician and MP Robert Kyagulanyi, known as Bobi Wine, is due to appear before a military court.

According to the state-run New Vision newspaper, external, he is to be charged with treason, unlawful possession of firearms and malicious damage to President Yoweri Museveni's motorcade.

Opposition politician Kassiano Wadri, who won Wednesday's fiercely contested parliamentary by-election against the ruling party in the northern town of Arua, is facing similar charges.

The two were arrested after a vehicle in President Yoweri Museveni's convoy was attacked late on Monday. Wine’s driver was later shot dead.

Wine was admitted to a military hospital on Wednesday for unspecified treatment, the deputy prime minister told parliament.

He has emerged as a leading opponent of Mr Museveni since he became an independent MP last year, and has been touted as a potential challenger to him in the 2021 election.

Mr Museveni has been in power since 1986, and is expected to run for office again.

Read: The young musician taking on Uganda's long-time leader

Our African proverb of the day:

Image source, Getty Images

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

Welcome back to BBC Africa Live, where we will bring you the latest news and views from around the continent.

BBC Africa Live
Lucy Fleming

That's all from the BBC Africa Live page. 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 the wise words for the day:

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this photo, posted on Instagram, of a man walking a sheep in Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott.

Mohanad Hashim
BBC Focus on Africa radio

The number of children who drowned when their boat capsized in northern Sudan has risen to 23, a resident of Kenba village has just told me.

The woman, who also died, was a healthcare worker not a teacher as earlier stated, he said.

The governor of River Nile state has now arrived with officers - and a rudimentary rescue operation is under way, he added.

See the earlier entry, where a headmaster describes how the boat capsized.

Adedayo Okedare
BBC Yoruba

Meet a 78-year-old crocodile that is worshipped as god by some people in south-western Nigeria:

Residents of the Oje suburb of Ibadan city bring chickens to the reptile so that it can answer their prayers.

It has been owned by the Delesolu family as a pet for several generations, though they don’t believe it has any spiritual powers.

Raufu Yesufu, head of the Delesolu household, told BBC Yoruba: “Because of our faith, the Muslim faith, I don’t believe it has any powers."

But he said traditional herbalists have long thought the crocodile does have special abilities – in particular in healing the sick or helping those who want to fall pregnant.

He says the faeces and water are then used in treatments in the belief that they will remedy various ailments.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Three men have been arrested in South Africa for selling rocket-propelled grenades on the streets of a busy town.

They were found trying to sell the weapons in Mbombela, formerly known as Nelspruit, for the equivalent of more than $20,000 (£16,000) each.

A spokeswoman for the elite police unit, the Hawks, said the men were caught following a tip-off.

She said the two foreign nationals and one South African were found in possession of two of the weapons, which are believed to have come from Mozambique.

Ameyu Etana
BBC Afaan Oromo

Image source, Getty Images

Ethiopian exiled Olympic athlete Feyisa Lilesa has told the BBC he is ready to go home after an official appeal for him to return.

He rose to fame at the Rio Olympics in 2016 when he crossed the finish line to take silver in the marathon and crossed his arms in a symbolic gesture used by the Oromo people, who were facing a brutal security crackdown at the time.

Afterwards he decided to go into exile to the US and ever since has been in Arizona, where his family joined him. He refused to return home, saying his life would be in danger.

But in the last year the government has changed and is headed by reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who is himself from the Oromia region.

These changes have made Feyisa, who hasn’t run represented his country for two years, rethink his stance. He told the BBC:

He doesn’t know exactly when he is going back, but he should have a firm date within the next few weeks, the athlete added.

On Tuesday, the Ethiopian Olympic Committee (EOC) and the Ethiopian Athletics Federation (EAF) issued a joint statement promising Feyisa a “hero’s welcome”.

Read more about Feyisa Lilesa and his protest.

Conservationists in South Africa have started to cut off the horns of rhinos to protect them from poachers.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead, who has accompanied a team to see how it is done, says de-horning a rhino is akin to cutting one's fingernails.

See for yourself:

Catherine Byaruhanga
BBC Africa, Kampala

Image source, AFP

Uganda's Deputy Prime Minister Moses Ali has told parliament that the opposition MP and musician Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has been flown to a military hospital in Gulu - in the north of Uganda - for medical treatment.

He was detained along with three other MPs and dozens of his supporters ahead of Wednesday's controversial by-election in Arua, a north-western town bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

He is due to appear in court in Gulu on Thursday, Mr Ali said.

The arrests in Arua followed an attack on President Yoweri Museveni's convoy on Monday. Wine's driver was later shot dead. (See earlier post)

The by-election is taking place because the previous MP was shot dead.

Pumza Fihlani
BBC News, Johannesburg

South Africans are sending messages of condolence to the Sobukwe family following the death of anti-apartheid struggle stalwart Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, who was affectionately known as the “Mother of Azania”.

She was the widow of Robert Sobukwe, who in 1959 helped found the radical Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) – one of the parties that fought against white-minority rule. It had broken way from the now-ruling African Nation Congress (ANC) party.

She met Sobukwe as a trainee nurse when she was a strike leader calling for more rights for black student nurses at Victoria Hospital in Lovedale, external.

After their marriage and his imprisonment by the white-minority government, she fought tirelessly for his release.

After he was freed from prison he was kept under house arrest.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, the apartheid government made it hard for him to receive treatment, and he died in 1978 from lung complications – something that continued to anger Mrs Sobukwe.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the PAC and some in the country have accused the ANC of overlooking her contribution to the struggle.

In April, some of that recognition was bestowed on her when she was awarded the Order of Luthuli, an accolade given to those who have made a meaningful contribution to the struggle for democracy.

On Wednesday, President Cryril Ramaphosa described the 91-year-old as “a heroine of the resistance”:

Twenty-two children and a teacher have died in Sudan after a boat capsized about 750km (470 miles) north of the capital Khartoum.

The boat was crossing a flooded area near the River Nile.

Abd el-Khayr Adam Yunis, the headmaster of the Kenba High School, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme how the accident happened:

The headmaster said the pupils used to go to school on foot, but over the last week had been using a boat to cross a distance of about 2.5km because of flooding after heavy rain.

He said he had difficulty reporting the accident as the telephone network had been down because of the rains.

He said as soon as the phones started working they contacted all the big towns nearby - Abu Hamad, Karima and Ed-Damer – but after five hours were still waiting for help.

BBC Africa Sudan expert Mohanad Hashim says residents in the area, mostly from the Manaseer ethnic group, have long been raising concerns about the flooding blamed on the construction of a controversial dam.

Image source, Maher27777

The designer of a bridge that collapsed on Tuesday in the Italian city of Genoa had also designed one in Libya, which was reportedly closed last year because of worries over its safety, external.

It is not yet clear what caused the collapse of the motorway bridge, which was designed by Riccardo Morandi, completed in 1967 and restructured in 2016.

His Wadi al-Kufi bridge straddles a valley about 20km (12 miles) from Libya’s eastern city of Bayda.

The Libyan Observer describes it as Africa’s second-highest bridge built between 1965 and 1972.

Morandi, an Italian civil engineer who died in 1989, used reinforced concrete in many of his projects.

• Read more: What could have caused the Genoa collapse?

Mohamed Osman
BBC Arabic, Khartoum

Image source, Facebook

The brother of Salih Khater, the driver who rammed into a barrier outside the Houses of Parliament, in the UK capital, London, on Tuesday has described him as a "normal person" with no fanatical ideas and no links to any religious group.

Abdullah Khater told the BBC his brother had gone to the UK as a refugee from Sudan and was granted asylum.

He said the family were in "a state of shock" and Salih had been planning to visit Sudan for next week's Hajj holidays.

“Salih migrated to the UK soon after he’d graduated from university to improve the living conditions for himself and his family,” he said, adding that he was granted citizenship after seven years.

Salih had studied electrical engineering at the Sudan University of Science and Technology.

The family is originally from Sudan's eastern region of Darfur, but migrated years ago to Gezira state, an area south of the capital, Khartoum famous for its irrigation, where his father worked as a farmer.

Milton Nkosi
BBC Africa, Johannesburg

The publishers of a controversial book about an alleged South African apartheid-era paedophile ring say they are shocked by the death of the title’s co-author – just one week after its publication.

Mark Minnie was found dead on Monday – and police believe he took his own life.

Tafelberg Publishers said they were last in touch with Mr Minnie on Sunday evening, external and that during the preceding week he had said "nothing to indicate he might harm himself".

The writer had also told the publishers he was looking forward to Cape Town’s Open Book Festival where he and his co-author Chris Steyn were due to discuss the book.

The Lost Boys of Bird Island details allegations that former minister Magnus Malan was part of a paedophile ring active during white-minority rule, which ended in 1994.

Mr Minnie, 58, was a former police officer who worked as a narcotics detective in 1980s.

He alleges that Mr Malan, who died in 2011, and others lured young boys to Bird Island in Algoa Bay close to Port Elizabeth where they were molested.

Police say a note was found on the scene where Mr Minnie’s body was discovered in Port Elizabeth. A firearm had been found lying next to him.

#FreeSamuelOgundipe is trending in Nigeria – with tweeters calling for the release of a journalist arrested for refusing to reveal the source of a story.

Samuel Ogundipe works for the Premium Times, which said the offending story related to the siege of the country’s parliament last week by hooded members of the country’s spy agency.

Image source, Reuters

In an article the paper says he referred to a briefing sent to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo by the police chief on the siege.

Premium Times editor-in-chief Musikilu Mojeed and another reporter were also detained in the capital, Abuja, but released within a few hours.

They were reportedly picked up by members of the controversial anti-robbery squad Sars, which Mr Osinbajo says is going to be reformed because of allegations of human rights abuses committed by its officers.

Mr Mojeed asked a commander at the police force's headquarters if he was aware that asking a journalist to reveal his source could become an embarrassment for Nigeria, the paper says, external.

It quotes Deputy Commissioner of Police Sani Ahmadu as saying:

• Read more: Heroes and villains of Nigeria's parliamentary siege

Ethiopian journalist Samson Berhane flew to Eritrea's capital, Asmara, recently in search of his long-last father.

The two had been separated amid the two-decade conflict between the two countries.

He told the BBC's Focus on Africa radio programme that the recent end of hostilities has meant he was able to put his investigative skills to work.

Listen to how discovered his father - and seven more siblings:

Winger Wilfried Zaha has signed a new five-year contract with Crystal Palace.

The Ivory Coast international, 25, who was linked with a move to Tottenham or Chelsea, external in the summer transfer window, said he was relieved the talks over a new deal had concluded.

"I just wanted to get it over and done with, so I can focus on the season," he told the club website, having committed to the Eagles until the end of 2022-23.

"I'm buzzing that we managed to get it sorted," he said.

Watch his short interview below.

See the BBC Sport story for more details.

Alastair Leithead
BBC News, South Africa

A whistle-blower has told the BBC he was the middleman between rhino-horn smugglers and a court syndicate in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.

He alleges he took money given to a lawyer from rhino-horn kingpins and paid it to people within the judiciary.

The lawyer, Welcome Ngwenya, denies that he was involved in paying bribes.

But investigations, involving others informants, point to a court syndicate that could be keeping rhino killers beyond the reach of the law.

Read more about what has been uncovered here.