Member states of the African Union

The United States and Egypt are returning to a ?stronger base? in their relationship despite tensions and concerns over human rights, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Aug. 2 at the first strategic dialogue between the two sides since 2009. 

US President Barack Obama arrives in his ancestral homeland Kenya late July 24, with a massive security operation under way to protect him from Al-Qaeda-linked Somali militants.

Tunisian authorities have arrested 12 people they suspect are linked to the Sousse beach hotel attack on foreign tourists, and are hunting for two men who trained in a Libyan jihadist camp with the Sousse attacker, an official said. 

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide and war crimes, fled from an African Union summit meeting last Monday before the conference ended. The South African High Court was going to order him arrested and handed over to the ICC, but the South African government let him fly out of a military airport near Pretoria.

Sudan heads to the polls next week in elections widely expected to extend President Omar al-Bashir's quarter-century of rule, despite continued unrest and a faltering economy.

Bashir is facing 15 little-known challengers in the vote - which takes place over three days starting from April 13 - but main opposition parties are boycotting.

Leaders from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed a cooperation deal on March 23 over a giant Ethiopian hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the river Nile, in a bid to ease tensions over regional water supplies.

Tunisia said two gunmen who killed 21 people at its national museum trained at a militant camp in Libya, as the country marked its Independence Day in sombre fashion on March 20.
      

Almost 15,000 Egyptians have flocked home from war-torn Libya via the border crossing at Sallum, state media reported on Feb. 23, after Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group jihadists murdered 21 Coptic Christians.
      

At a time when Jihadists are burning and beheading people, or cutting off women’s hands off because they used cellphones, the nightmare of a new round of mass executions surfaced after 35 Egyptian Coptic farmers were kidnapped in Libya in retribution for Egypt’s air raids.

The Greek foreign ministry condemned on Monday the coldblooded execution of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya by Islamic State militants.