Boko Haram: Emir Denies Fleeing Palace

                                                             Emir of Mubi, Alhaji Abubakar Isa

The Emir of Mubi, Alhaji Abubakar Isa, has reacted to the reports making rounds that he fled his palace in Mubi following Boko Haram’s threat of an impending attack.

Chief John Elias, spokesman of the Emir of Mubi, Alhaji Abubakar Isa in a statement made on Wednesday in Yola during a press briefing denied the reports.

Chief John Elias said that the Emir, who is state Amirul Hajj left Mubi on Sunday for Yola to attend a meeting to prepare for the 2014 Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

He said: “We are dismayed by media reports regarding the emir’s departure from Mubi for Yola on 7 September 2014.

“Let me put the record straight here; the Emir did not leave Mubi for Yola to escape from the insurgents.

Ebola spreads exponentially in Liberia, many more cases soon: WHO

Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare themselves before to carrying an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014.

Liberia, the country worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic, should see thousands of new cases in coming weeks as the virus spreads exponentially, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

The epidemic, the worst since the disease was discovered in 1976, has killed some 2,100 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria and has also spread to Senegal.

The WHO believes it will take six to nine months to contain and may infect up to 20,000 people. In Liberia, the disease has already killed 1,089 people - more than half of all deaths reported since March in this regional epidemic.

Battle for Benghazi could break up Libya

Pro-government Libyan forces, already reeling from the fall of the capital, are fighting to prevent Islamist militants from seizing the eastern city of Benghazi and splitting the North African country into three warring parts.

Three weeks after losing Tripoli to a different militia, the army now faces an offensive in Libya's second-largest city from the Islamists of Ansar al-Sharia, which has overrun special forces bases and is attacking Benghazi airport.

Losing the port city would not only leave the government looking impotent and irrelevant. It would also increase the risk of the country crumbling into de facto autonomous regions: the militants demand Islamist rule, while other armed groups want greater powers for the eastern region they call by its ancient name of Cyrenaica.

Somalia to probe rape charges against African Union troops

Somali authorities said on Tuesday they would investigate charges that women and girls in the capital Mogadishu had been raped by African peacekeepers, a principal source of security in the war-torn country.

A report released on Monday by the group Human Rights Watch documented the rape or sexual exploitation of 21 women and girls, all of them displaced from their homes, at peacekeeping bases run by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

In some cases, the females entered the bases through official gates to request medicine and water, and were taken to areas where they were then abused by a Somali intermediary, according to the New York-based rights group.

Kenya holds two Germans suspected of Somali Islamist link: police

Kenyan authorities have detained two German nationals who they accuse of being members of the Somali Islamist group al Shabaab, which has been blamed for a series of attacks on Kenyan soil, police said Tuesday.

"We arrested the two foreigners following information that they had traveled to Somalia and joined the militant group fighting the government," John Mulaulu, Kenya's acting head of Anti Terrorism Police Unit, told Reuters by telephone

"The two were arrested on Aug. 29 within the Kenyan capital, Nairobi when they arrived from Somalia," he said, adding that both men were German.