Zambia ruling party splits

Lusaka - A major split in Zambia's ruling Patriotic Front (PF) has seen two factions select rival candidates for presidential elections next month, raising the possibility that the opposition could snatch victory.

A faction loyal to acting president Guy Scott chose late president Michael Sata's nephew Miles Sampa as its candidate on Monday night, a day after Defence Minister Edgar Lungu was named by a breakaway group.

"The PF in its current form is a weak ruling party and there is a possibility that it can lose the elections," political analyst Neo Simutanyi told AFP.

Sierra Leone widens Ebola quarantine

Freetown - Ebola-hit Sierra Leone has quarantined hundreds of thousands more citizens, it said on Tuesday, sealing off a sixth district, with more than half of the country's population already under lockdown.

Tonkolili, in the centre, was added to the growing list of districts which no one is allowed to leave or enter without special dispensation, in an effort to combat an outbreak which is spiralling out of control, with 1 400 deaths so far.

Nigerian capital city attacks claim 77 lives

Bauchi - At least 77 people died in attacks by suspected Islamic extremists who struck two northeast Nigerian state capitals, health workers said on Tuesday.

The deaths from Monday's attacks bring the toll to at least 247 people reported killed in a week of increasing violence from an Islamic uprising in the northeast of Africa's biggest oil producer.

Egypt court sentences 188 people to death

Cairo - An Egyptian criminal court has sentenced 188 people to death pending approval from the country's top religious official.

They are accused of involvement in a "massacre" of eleven policemen last August in the town of Kerdasa, west of Cairo, in one of the country's grisliest assaults on security forces.

Precious World

Two explosions rip