Africa

Two men who were among 41 people picked up over the weekend from a boat found adrift in the Mediterranean Sea described on Thursday surviving what they say was a shipwreck that might have killed up to 500 people.

France signed several deals worth about 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) with Egypt during a visit by French President Francois Hollande to Cairo, the French president's office said on April 18, as reported by Reuters. 

The deals included a satellite communications contract agreed upon following discussions between the two presidents and their defense ministries, the Elysee said. 

Libya's parliament postponed a vote of confidence expected to be held on April 19 on a new UN-backed unity government even as it asserted its authority by assuming control of two ministries.
 
Deputies told AFP a special session of the internationally-recognised parliament, to be held in the eastern city of Tobruk, failed to take place because of "big differences".
 

Hundreds of refugees are feared to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea after their boats capsized on the way to Europe, a Somali ambassador has said.

More than 400 refugees are thought to have drowned, the Somali ambassador to Egypt told BBC Arabic.

Senegal state-owned television has said Turkish Airlines is the front-runner to take a stake in Air Senegal, a new national airline intended to replace the West African nation's now defunct, heavily indebted carrier Senegal Airlines.

Senegalese President Macky Sall was in Istanbul for the 13th Organization of Islamic Cooperation(OIC) summit last week. 

Egyptian police fired tear gas at dozens of protesters in Cairo on April 15 who rallied against a controversial deal to hand two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia, a security official said.

A police official said officers fired tear gas and made arrests at one of the protests in the Cairo neighborhood of Mohandessin.

Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has been invited to visit Algeria by his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

The invitation was presented to Nikolic on Thursday during his meeting in Belgrade with Algerian Ambassador to Serbia Abdelhamid Chebchoub.

International justice campaigners criticised Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic for giving a medal to his Sudanese counterpart Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes.

Charter flights will be connecting Bulgaria and Morocco starting in September, the Moroccan Embassy has said.

A regular flight will be scheduled every Thursday to the Atlantic resort of Agadir in Morocco from an unnamed airport in Sofia, the website Dnevnik.bg reports, quoting a tour operator company.

Most offers to Bulgarian tourists willing to visit Agadir are all inclusive.

One of Libya's rival governments resigned on April 5, a step that helps efforts by a new, U.N.-brokered unity government to assert itself in the capitol, Tripoli, despite opposition from some local militias.