• Cameroon to prosecute 7 soldiers over 'atrocity' video
  

Cameroon says it will prosecute seven soldiers caught in a video clip that went viral executing two women and their two children, provoking widespread outrage.
The ministry of defence said the seven suspects would be brought before a military court in the capital Yaounde on charges of murder and breach of regulations.

Cameroon had initially dismissed the video as fake news before arresting the suspects a month after the killings in July last year in a region prone to raids by Boko Haram.

The government is under pressure to safeguard human rights abuses by its agencies, separatists, terrorists and vigilantes especially in English-speaking regions that have
left 1,850 and displaced more than 530,000 people, according to independent sources.

• Mauritanian opposition plans protest over poll results

Four losing presidential candidates in Mauritania say they will organise demonstrations on Thursday and use other legal means to challenge what they see as a power grab by the military.

In elections held Saturday marking the first democratic transition after a history of coups former army general Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won outright with 52 per cent of the vote.

The losing candidates - Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, former prime minister Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, journalist Baba Hamidou Kane and Mohamed Lemine El-Mourteji El-Wavi - said multiple irregularities had eliminated credibility in the provisional results which still have to be confirmed by the country's constitutional council.

• Zimbabwe wants ivory ban lifted so it can sell $600-mln stockpile

Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa opened a UNEP wildlife Economy summit on Monday with a call to lift the global ivory trade ban so that the country can sell $600 million of stockpiled tusks.

Mnangagwa said selling the elephant tusks and rhino horns would enable the government fund conservation efforts for 20 years.

Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia have all cited the growing number of elephants in some areas in their bid to have the ban relaxed, angering many conservationists.

• Five rhinos resettled in Rwanda from Czech zoo

Five critically endangered eastern black rhinos were on Monday successfully relocated to Rwanda's Akagera National Park from the Czech Republic.

This is the second translocation to Rwanda after South Africa donated 17 rhinos in 2017, reintroducing the species after it had disappeared for over a decade due to intense poaching.

The South Africa donation has since increased to 20 but the Czech crash will live in enclosed spaces to increase their adaptability and survival.

• Burkina medics seek better work conditions, threaten strike

Hundreds of doctors and nurses demonstrated Monday in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou to protest against declining health facilities and to demand better working conditions.

The main doctors' union also warned it would stage a general strike from June 30 to July 7 to demand "concrete responses" to their grievances.

The doctors also want the implementation of an accord signed with the government in 2017 promising better working conditions which they say remains only on paper.

• World faces 'climate apartheid': UN expert

The world faces "a climate apartheid" where the wealthy are better able to adjust to a hotter planet while the poor suffer the worst from climate change.

In a new report, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, warned that "climate change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress... in poverty reduction."

Alston's report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council next week, cited previous research that climate change could leave 140 million across the developing world homeless by 2050.

• Ebola death toll breaks 1,500 mark in DRC

More than 1,500 people have died in a nearly 10-month-old outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The health ministry said as of Sunday, 1,506 people have died out of 2,239 recorded cases. That does not include the two deaths in Uganda last week.

Nearly 141,000 people have been vaccinated in the affected eastern DRC provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, the epicentre of the outbreak.

• Zimbabwe ends foreign currency use as inflation spirals

Zimbabwe will abandon the use of foreign currencies which replaced the local dollar that was swiped out by hyperinflation ten years ago.

The country is confronting another bout of sharply rising prices, with official inflation now at nearly 100 per cent.

Zimbabwe's central bank said in a statement that official legal tender would be only the two local currencies - bond notes and "RTGS" - which are at par with the Zimbabwe dollar.

Bond notes were introduced in 2014, while electronic RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) dollars came earlier this year as the liquidity of US dollars dried up.

• Bitcoin surges above $11,000 thanks to Facebook's currency plans

Bitcoin surged to a near 16-month high of $11,251 Monday as the cryptocurrency sector got a huge boost from Facebook's unveiling of its own digital unit Libra.

Analysts, however, said the virtual currency's volatility was likely to persist.

Bitcoin has risen about 20 percent this month alone but is still well off record levels near $20,000 seen at the end of 2017.

• Ex-IAAF chief Lamine Diack to stand trial in France

Lamine Diack, the disgraced former head of world athletics' ruling body the IAAF, his son Papa Massata Diack and four others are to stand trial in France on charges of corruption and money laundering.

Diack 16-year reign as IAAF president ended in chaos amid charges he and his son obstructed sanctions against Russia for doping in return for payments.

Prosecutors allege that Lamine Diack was prepared to accept funding for political campaigns in Senegal in return for IAAF anti-doping officials turning a blind eye to Russian athletes caught doping.