North Africa

A top U.N. official on Wednesday told the Security Council that a fresh wave of violence in South Sudan is dragging the world's youngest country closer to a "humanitarian catastrophe" as the global body bolsters its military presence there.
     

Two high-profile incidents happened last week, at opposite ends of the Arab world. In northern Iraq, recently conquered by the zealots of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levent (ISIL), who refer to themselves now as the Islamic State (IS), gave Christians in Mosul three choices: convert to Islam, pay a special tax (about $750, on this occasion), or be killed.

Some 59 skeletons were found in 1964, lying together in a gravesite beside the Nile Rıver, near what is now the Egyptian-Sudanese border. They died between 13,000 and 14,000 years ago, and some of them seemed to have died in battle. That was big news half a century ago, when most people still believed organized killing was an invention of civilization.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said July 6 he "wished" three jailed al-Jazeera journalists including an Australian had not been put on trial, conceding the case had been damaging, a newspaper reported.

An Al-Jazeera journalist whose jailing triggered global outrage has donated 15,000 Egyptian pounds to a fund initiated by the president to boost Egypt's ailing economy, his brother said on Thursday.
      

A Sudanese court on June 23 ordered the release of a 27-year-old woman who was sentenced to death last month for converting from Islam to Christianity, the state news agency said.

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic welcomed, in the talks with Algerian Ambassador Abdelkader Mesdoua on Monday, the readiness of Algeria to take part in the forthcoming international donor conference to raise funds for alleviation of consequences brought about by the recent catastrophic floods.

BELGRADE - Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday thanked Algeria for a USD 500,000 donation aimed at helping Serbia deal with the consequences of recent floods.

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who toppled Egypt's first freely elected leader, took more than 90 percent of the vote in a presidential election, provisional results showed on Thursday, as he joined a long line of leaders drawn from the military.
   

BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic has said that he visited Tunisia to commemorate World War I events relating to a rescue of Serbian soldiers and to offer support for the government of the country on its path to democracy.