Barka! Ga abubuwan da ya kamata ka sani
NIGERIA/U.S.: The top U.S. diplomat for African affairs, Johnnie Carson, will go to Nigeria to observe parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. Nigeria delayed the polls by a week following widespread logistical problems on the initial election day April 2. The delay also forced postponements to the presidential and state governor elections.
SOMALIA PIRACY: The European Union's anti-piracy force says pirates have hijacked a ship off of east Africa, 55 kilometers south of the coast of Oman.
IVORY COAST: United Nations officials say investigators have found more than 100 bodies in western Ivory Coast in the past 24 hours. A spokesman for the U.N. human rights agency said bodies were found in more than one location and most of the deaths seemed to be "ethnically motivated."
DJIBOUTI ELECTION: Voters in Djibouti are selecting their next president Friday, but incumbent President Ismail Omar Guelleh faces only one challenger and is widely expected to win.
ZIMBABWE: A Zimbabwe court has ordered supporters of President Robert Mugabe to stop exhuming hundreds of bodies from a recently discovered mass grave.
IVORY COAST CRISIS: Ivory Coast's internationally recognized president wants economic sanctions lifted now that his forces are barricading the incumbent leader in the presidential compound.
NIGERIA ELECTIONS: Nigerians head to the polls tomorrow after several delays for the first of a three-part general election.
KENYA/ICC: Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and two others are due at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They are accused of links to post-election violence in 2007-8. The three are seen as allies of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. Michael Onyiego in Nairobi will monitor and file as warranted.
ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwe's High Court has stopped exhumations of hundreds of corpses allegedly buried in disused mine shafts during the independence war. President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF claims the mass grave is filled with people killed by the former Rhodesian security forces. But opposition political parties say forensic pathologists should establish when the people died, and in what circumstances.
IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast's internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara has called on the European Union to help return the country to normalcy by lifting sanctions on the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro and certain public utilities.