Ed Habershon
BBC News

Image source, Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace Africa

New research into the world’s largest tropical peatlands, in the Congo basin, has revealed that climate change 5,000 years ago led to them drying out, releasing damaging amounts of carbon dioxide, a phenomenon that is threatening to repeat itself today.

The peatlands today store huge amounts of carbon, up to 30 billion tonnes, that if released, would be the equivalent of three years’ global carbon emissions.

A team of scientists from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the UK carried out the study in the area this year, and the results will be published in Nature magazine.

Professor Corneille Ewango from DR Congo’s University of Kisangani, who led the expeditions, said:

The peatlands are also under threat from development, and the Congolese government recently launched an auction of land in the area for oil and gas exploration.

Read more: The 'lungs of humanity' which are under threat

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The spokeswoman for Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has tweeted that a "nation's healing [is] in progress".

Billene Seyoum's tweet came after the government and Tigrayan forces agreed to a truce, though she did not mention it.

Mr Abiy has not yet tweeted his reaction to the agreement.

The UN special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, says the international community is ready to support Ethiopia's path to peace.

"This is an opportunity to chart a new course. The young men and women who have been mobilised to fight will now have the chance to return to their homes and their families," she said

South Africa's foreign minister Naledi Pandor has appealed to the Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces to adhere to the cessation of hostilities agreement they have signed.

"There are no winners in war," she said.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

As well as agreeing to silence the guns, the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) have also promised unhindered humanitarian access.

The African Union chief mediator - the former Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo - said the two sides had signed up to a disarmament plan and the restoration of services.

For most of the war the Tigray region has been cut off without power, phones or the internet.

There is still a long way to go to stop this war and Mr Obasanjo said the deal was just the start of the peace process.

Neighbouring Eritrea is heavily invested in the conflict and was not present at the talks.

The BBC’s Kaleb Moges explains the significance of Western Tigray in Ethiopia's civil war.

A leading representative of the Tigrayans has been speaking about the deal struck with the Ethiopian government at the peace talks in South Africa.

"We have now signed an agreement. We will leave the past behind us. Making peace has proved elusive. Hundreds of thousands have died," Getachew Reda said.

He is the spokesman of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has been in the forefront of the two-year war with government forces.

Ethiopian government representative Redwan Hussien, who is Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's National Security Adviser, said all parties should be true to the letter and spirit of the agreement.

"The level of destruction is immense," he said.

African Union chief mediator Olusegun Obasanjo has welcomed the peace agreement signed by the Ethiopian government and Tigray forces to end the conflict that has devastated northern Ethiopia.

"I visited Tigray region eight times. We see in today's peace signing agreement a silencing of the guns," he said.

The Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces have agreed on a permanent cessation of hostilities to end the war in the northern Tigrayan region.

The announcement was made by African Union chief mediator Olusegun Obasanjo following talks between the two sides in South Africa.

Between 385,000 and 600,000 civilians are estimated to have died during the two-year war in Tigray because of fighting, famine and lack of health care, according to a Belgian-led academic team.

An earlier five-month truce collapsed in August, and government forces - backed by troops from Eritrea - took control of key cities and towns from Tigrayan forces.

Wilson Kiprugut, who won Kenya's first Olympic medal in 1964, is hailed as a pioneer by David Rudisha after his death aged 84.

Fifteen Nobel Prize winners are calling on the COP27 climate summit host, Egypt, to release thousands of political prisoners, including the writerAlaa Abdel Fattah.

The prominent British-Egyptian activist was a major figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak.

On Tuesday, he went on hunger strike, and said he would stop drinking water from Sunday.

He is serving a five-year sentence for allegedly "broadcasting false news", and has spent much of the past decade behind bars.

A chronology of key events in the history of Benin, from 1946 to the present

Charles Gitonga
BBC Africa business reporter, Nairobi

Image source, Getty Images

Sources in Kenya Airways say a strike by pilots is expected to start from midnight local time, grounding flights, especially at the main airport in the capital, Nairobi.

The pilots are demanding that the airline resumes contributions to their retirement fund which were stopped during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

The airline however says it is financially strained and unable to resume the contributions until the middle of next year.

Kenya Airways has been reporting financial losses for the better part of the last decade and often depends on financial bailouts from its largest shareholder - the government.

The airline has said it will lose $2.5m (£2.2m) per day if its pilots strike.

The pilots, through the association representing them, gave a notice of their plan to strike two weeks ago.

The two parties have been trading accusations, with the association claiming victimisation of unionised pilots by the management of Kenya Airways.

The airline says that the pilots' association has snubbed invitations to negotiate their demands.

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

Image source, Getty Images

Police in north-west Nigeria say a criminal gang has kidnapped 21 people - including teenagers - who were working on a farm.

Other reports say many more were seized.

A police spokesman said dozens of gunmen on motorcycles stormed the farm in Katsina State's Faskari district on Sunday while the workers were harvesting crops.

He said the military was assisting in the effort to find and free the captives.

Katsina is one of several states in north-west and central Nigeria that are frequently terrorised by criminal gangs.

People are often killed in the raids and property looted.

Those abducted are usually released after a ransom is paid.

Peter Jegwa
Lilongwe, Malawi

Students of the University of Malawi have been sent home after a decision to close it because of student protests.

The students are protesting against an academic calendar that keeps them at home for five to six months between semesters - which they say will result in a four-year course being concluded in up to seven years.

Several meetings between student representatives and university authorities have been held without an agreement being reached.

Last Thursday, a student general assembly resolved to suspend classes and on the following day, students started rioting, blocking all roads leading to the university with stones and tree branches.

In a statement on Wednesday, the university's acting registrar, Mary Wasiri, said the school had been been closed until further notice, saying the protests had rendered the campus unsafe for both staff and students.

The academic calendar that's being contested was adopted in April in order to accommodate two first-year groups, one from last year and another from this year.

Last year's group spent almost a year and a half at home following the closure of all academic institutions due to Covid-19.

The university resolved to stagger the teaching of the two first-year groups so that both would alternate their time on campus, Ms Wasiri said.

This is because the university did not have enough teaching space and staff to accommodate them at the same time.

Victor Ezeama
BBC News Pidgin, Lagos

Image source, af

A video purportedly showing the drowning of the three-year-old son of Afrobeats star Davido is actually CCTV footage of the drowning of a two-year-old boy in China, the BBC Disinformation Unit has confirmed.

Police have also dismissed the video - which has gone viral on social media - as fake.

“We are yet to start looking at the CCTV obtained from Davido’s home. Any video you see online is not the real thing. It is fake,” police spokesman in Lagos, Benjamin Hundeyin, told the BBC.

Davido's son, Ifeanyi Adeleke, drowned on Monday night in a swimming pool at the music star's home in Lagos, the main city in Nigeria.

The incident depicted in the video occurred on 23 August 2019 in China.

Davido and his fiancée Chioma Rowland, a popular chef and influencer, have not yet commented on their son's death.

On Tuesday eight domestic staff of the celebrity were invited for interrogation - six of them have since been released.

The police spokesman confirmed that one of those still being questioned is the late Ifeanyi’s nanny.

“We hope to transfer them to the state criminal investigative department today [Wednesday] for further questioning,” he said.

Cecilia Macaulay
BBC News

Image source, Hushpuppi

Instagram has told the BBC that they deactivated the account of the Nigerian influencer and high profile international fraudster, Hushpuppi, because he broke their rules on fraud.

"We don’t want anyone to use our apps to defraud or exploit people, and have clear rules against fraudulent activity - including money laundering," a spokesperson from Meta, which owns Instagram, said in a statement.

"We disabled @hushpuppi’s account for breaking these rules," the statement continued.

Hushpuppi, whose real name is Ramon Abbas, used to post luxurious images on his Instagram, displaying his expensive lifestyle to his 2.8 million followers.

But that luxury lifestyle came to an abrupt end after he was arrested in Dubai, where he lived, in June 2020.

Less than a year later, he pleaded guilty to money laundering in a US court and is considered to be one of the world's most high-profile fraudsters, according to the FBI.

Unsealed court documents showed that in his last plot, he tried to to steal more than $1.1m ($960m) from someone who wanted to build a school in Qatar.

He had a network all over the world, with some of his schemes spreading from Malta to Mexico.

Documents filed in California say that his' crimes cost nearly $24m, and he now faces a potential 20 year jail sentence.

Despite Hushpuppi's guilty plea last year, Instagram had not taken down his account at the time, saying they had investigated and decided not to close it.

The current deactivation of his account was first picked up by Nigerian media on Sunday.

Meta's rules on fraud, external says they try to "prevent fraudulent activity that can harm people or businesses".

You can read more about Hushpuppi here.

Malibongwe Maketa is appointed South Africa interim head coach for the three-Test tour of Australia starting next month.

Samba Cyuzuzo
BBC Great Lakes

Image source, Monusco

At least one lorry belonging to UN forces was burnt on Tuesday night and UN personnel were injured as they were “tactically withdrawing” from an area captured by M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

A local journalist told the BBC that “angry civilians” attacked the convoy around Kanyaruchinya, which is less than 10km north of the main city in the east, Goma, injuring some UN personnel in the convoy.

In a statement, external, the UN mission, known as Monusco, said its troops shot to disperse the mob and “managed to leave the scene”, adding that two of its engineers from Bangladesh were injured.

On Tuesday afternoon, the UN troops, who fight alongside DR Congo's army, said they were “strategically and tactically withdrawing" from Rumangabo.

M23 rebels took Rumangabo military barracks, the biggest base close to Goma, following clashes over the weekend and earlier this week.

The UN force, the second largest UN mission globally, has been criticised for failing in its mission to bring about stability in eastern DR Congo.

Protests against the mission in July in North Kivu province left more than 35 dead, officials say.

Al-Shabab has carried out a series of attacks in Somalia recently, so is the group becoming more deadly?