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The bodies of nineteen Ethiopians who suffocated in the back of a Zambian container truck were discovered late last week by authorities in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a provincial official said on Saturday.

Another 76 Ethiopians were found alive inside the container on the truck when it was stopped just outside the town of Mwenda near the Zambian border on Thursday, the interior minister for the province of Haut Katanga, Ufwa Kasongo Kibali, told Reuters.

Kasongo said it was unclear why the Ethiopians were in the vehicle but U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi reported that they were migrants heading to South Africa. The survivors were handed over to the Zambian consulate, Kasongo added.

Ethiopia is experiencing its worst drought in 50 years, with more than 10 million people unable to feed themselves because their crops and animals have died. The drought and flash floods have displaced tens of thousands of people.

Many pay smugglers to help them reach South Africa, traveling thousands of miles packed into trucks. Some 45 Ethiopian migrants were found dead in June 2012 after they suffocated in a container truck in central Tanzania.

Reuters

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At the end of 2015, the world had 65.3 million people who had been forcibly displaced from their homes, the highest ever number on record, according to the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR), also known as the U.N. Refugee Agency. To put that number into context, sample this: The United Kingdom’s population was about 65.1 million at the end of 2015; the two largest U.S. states by population — California and Texas — taken together had about 67 million people, which accounts for more than 20 percent of the country’s total population.

The record figures for 2015 were released on June 20, which also marks World Refugee Day, and showed an increase of 5.8 million displaced people compared to the year before. The total of 65.3 million people includes internally displaced people (those who left their homes but stayed within their own country) as well as refugees seeking asylum in other countries.

About two-thirds, or 40.8 million people, were categorized as internally displaced, while almost a third, or 21.3 million, were classified as refugees. The remaining 3.2 million people were waiting for their asylum applications to be processed, mostly in Western countries. The 21.3 million figure was the highest recorded since the early 1990s, while the other two categories saw their highest numbers ever.

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Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to Abuja after almost two weeks in Britain where he was treated for an ear infection.

"I am okay. You can see me inspecting the guards of honor," the president told the throng of reporters waiting at the airport. "I'm strong. If you want to wrestle with me, let's wrestle," Buhari said in the local Hausa language.

The 73-year-old flew to London on June 6 to see an ear, nose and throat specialist after two doctors in Nigeria recommended further evaluation "as a precaution," his staff said.

Buhari initially was scheduled to return to Nigeria on Thursday.

His delayed return prompted concerns about his health problems, which come at a sensitive time for the country as it grapples with the security threat from Boko Haram Islamists and economic difficulties.

VOA

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An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to life in prison in an espionage trial in which six of his co-defendants were handed death penalties.

The court acquitted Morsi of charges of having supplied Qatar with classified documents but sentenced him to life for leading an unlawful organisation, his lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud told AFP.

The ousted president was also convicted of having “stolen secret documents concerning state security” and handed another 15-year jail term, the lawyer added.

Qatar was a main backer of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement while he was in power between 2012 and July 2013, when the military overthrew and detained him.

Morsi has been sentenced to death in a separate trial for his alleged role in prison breaks and attacks on police stations during the 2011 uprising that overthrew veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak.

He has also received a life sentence and a 20-year jail term in two other trials.

On Saturday the court confirmed death sentences against six defendants, including three journalists tried in absentia who allegedly helped relay secret documents to Qatar.

The journalists have been identified as Ibrahim Mohamed Hilal and Jordanian citizen Alaa Omar Mohamed Sablan, both of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channels.

The third has been named as Asmaa Mohamed al-Khatib, a female reporter with pro-Muslim Brotherhood news outlet Rassd.

The death sentences had been sent to the mufti – Egypt’s official interpreter of Islamic law – as Egyptian law requires his opinion on death sentences although his opinion is not binding.

The verdicts can be appealed.

African News

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Nigerian security forces are bracing for a possible attack during the holy month of Ramadan.

They’ve stepped up patrols around mosques. Boko Haram militants are known to strike during Ramadan.

An Islamic group, the National Council of Muslim Youth Organisation (NACOMYO), Wednesday, called on the militant sect, Boko Haram, to shelve its attacks, in the spirit of Ramadan.

The group made the appeal in a statement issued in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, to mark the Ramadan period; stressing that the violent organization should henceforth apply a non-violent option.

A few weeks ago the Nigerian Defence Headquarters said it had uncovered plots by sect to bomb locations in Nigeria during the forthcoming Ramadan fast.

“Information available to this Headquarters indicated plans by terrorists to use the Ramadan periods which usually attracts gathering of large number of persons during morning and evening worships and prayers to carryout large scale bombings,” Rabe Abubakar, Nigeria’s director of military information said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday.

Mr. Abubakar, a brigadier general, said, “Against this background, the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) wishes to once again advice the general public to be watchful of strange persons and objects in their localities particularly, around places of worships and to promptly report same to security agencie.

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Cameroon is making efforts to crack down on elephant poaching and ivory trafficking. Several recent busts have led officials to intensify surveillance at sea and in border areas.

A man who complained to police at their station near the town of Campo on Cameroon’s southern border with Gabon and Equatorial Guinea was arrested alongside 45 other people although he insisted he was just a passenger aboard the ship.

But Georges Mouncharou, Cameroon’s highest wildlife official in the area, said the ship had three containers of ivory on board weighing about 200 kilograms.

The discovery was a bit of luck.

Mouncharou said the ship ran out of fuel Tuesday and had to anchor in Cameroonian waters. The vessel was traveling from Gabon to Nigeria. Cameroonian officials noticed the ship while it was re-fueling and suspecting that it was owned by traffickers, they boarded it for a search. It is the first time Cameroon has found ivory on a sea vessel.

According to officials, the people on board were from Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Gambia and Niger. A dozen have been detained for further investigation.

Kpwang Abessolo Francois, senior Central Africa program officer for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, said the tusks are believed to have been collected from elephants killed in Cameroon and Gabon.

VOA