Congo expels U.N. mission spokesman

Amid a shifting political and security landscape in Africa’s Sahel region, the Security Council today decided to renew the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) for another year, while calling for an assessment of its cooperation with the host country’s authorities, the challenges it faces and options for its reconfiguration.

Germany will be the largest provider of troops in Mali following the UN's decision to extend its peace mission in Mali. But one important security measure will be missing after France's troop withdrawal this fall.

The remains of Congolese icon Patrice Lumumba, the country's first prime minister, are laid to rest in Kinshasa. Belgium returned a tooth belonging to the murdered independence hero earlier this month. Also, African ministers of education were in Paris on Thursday for a UNESCO summit on tackling the devastating effect that the pandemic has had on education.

A U.N.-appointed mission to Libya said on Monday (July 4) there are "probable mass graves" yet to be investigated, possibly as many as 100, in a town where hundreds of bodies have already been found, and it urged Tripoli to keep searching.

Relations between the Democratic Republic of Congo and neighboring Rwanda hit an all-time low as each blamed the other for escalating violence in the region. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by fighting.

A new UN report on hunger shows that the number of acutely hungry worldwide is increasing as fuel and food prices soar. The war in Ukraine has intensified the crisis.

Both the United States and Russia said they wanted to extend an aid scheme for Syria, but they clashed on how long the extension would last. In the end, no resolution was passed on getting aid to millions of people.

A potential Black Sea corridor to export grain from Ukraine tops the meeting agenda in Istanbul. However, the UN chief says there is "still a way to go" to clinch a deal.

After a US-Russia deadlock, the UN Security Council has agreed to extend a cross-border transfer of aid from Turkey to rebel-held areas of Syria — but only for six months, as demanded by Moscow.

The forests of Congo's South Kivu province are being depleted, in part by the production of charcoal - but in Bukavu a club for retirees is fighting back by making briquettes from the city's waste.

Russia and Ukraine made enough progress on resolving their dispute over blocked grain exports that "a final agreement" could be reached next week, the UN and Turkey said after face-to-face talks in Istanbul.

Nearly 60% of African countries remain dependent on exports of commodities despite decadeslong efforts to diversify. A shift to technology and financial services could help them withstand economic shocks, the UN says.