The Taliban in Afghanistan says it has obtained a government security plan for the grand assembly of leaders, or loya jirga, which opens in Kabul this week.
The document includes what appears to be a detailed list of security arrangements for senior figures.
Swaziland’s top Anglican cleric, Bishop Meshack Mabuza, has called on King Mswati III to give up political power in favour of a democratic government.
Bishop Mabuza told the BBC that Swaziland’s “archaic” system of government had plunged the country into a deep financial and economic crisis. —- They’re looking at the great outcomes in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq & Afghanistan. With UN resolve like this who needs enemies!!
For years the Arab League has been seen as a cosy club of Arab autocrats and dictators.
Ministerial meeting followed summit followed emergency summit, all having no apparent impact on the lives of ordinary Arabs in this troubled region.
But the Arab League headquarters are barely a couple of hundred metres from Tahrir Square, in central Cairo.
And the effect of the protests there, which unseated former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, are still echoing round the marbled halls of the League.
Last week’s bomb attack by Boko Haram in the capital Abuja has raised questions about Nigeria’s ability to defend itself.
But a reassessment is also being made of the nature of the enemy they are confronting.
Having long regarded the Islamist sect as a localised problem, security sources have told the BBC that they now believe the radical Islamist group to be receiving training and expertise from outside Nigeria.
Israel has offered to help Kenya secure its borders as it tackles Somalia’s Islamist group, al-Shabab, the Kenyan prime minister’s office has said.
It said Kenya got the backing of Israel to “rid its territory of fundamentalist elements” during Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s visit to the country.
Last month, Kenya sent troops to neighbouring Somalia to defeat al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda.
It blames the militants for a spate of abductions on its side of the border.
In a statement, Mr Odinga’s office quotes Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that “Kenya’s enemies are Israel’s enemies”.
At least 63 people have been killed in bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu, the Red Cross says.
Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police.
The Islamist militant group Boko Haram told a newspaper it was behind the attack and that it planned to hit further government targets.
For many years the Arab League was mocked, as the epitome of all that was wrong in the old Arab world.
It was seen as a body given to making grand statements, which only thinly veiled its powerlessness and its deep divisions.
But earlier this year, the surprise decision of the league to endorse a no-fly zone over Libya dramatically changed that assessment.
Nigeria’s Defence Minister Bello Halliru Mohammed says his men are once again “on top” of the security situation in the north - which has seen a spate of attacks by militant Islamist group Boko Haram - and that people have nothing to fear.
But his words may not re-assure many.
As last week’s bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Yobe and Borno states and the earlier explosions in the capital, Abuja, have shown, Boko Haram - once a small religious sect - is now a flexible dynamic organisation capable of changing tactics and targets.
Several days of fighting between rival factions near the Libyan coastal city of Zawiya have left at least seven people dead, reports say.
The BBC’s Karen Allen in Libya says rival communities have been fighting for an area previously controlled by Gaddafi loyalists.
