Africa highlights: Nigeria's currency plummets, Kenya police 'burned alive' in ambush

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Israel has built its biggest listening post in the Red Sea Basin in Eritrea, the Middle East Monitor is quoting a Dubai-based newspaper as saying.

According to the Palestinian Information Centre, the post is located on the Emba Soira, the highest mountain in Eritrea, it reports.

East Africa analyst Usama al-Ashqar said the post’s existence was confirmed by the Eritrean opposition and was aimed at observing Bab al-Mandab Strait and Israeli interests in the south of the Red Sea, especially the movement of its commercial ships, the Middle East Monitor reports.

He also said that the post would observe the activities of Arab troops involved in the conflict in Yemen and Iranian activities at sea. 

Israeli authorities have not commented on the report.

Read: Has Eritrea's migration problem been exaggerated? 

One final entry linked to World Refugee Day. 

It comes from award-winning Sudanese cartoonist Khalid Albaih:

BBCCopyright: BBC

As the world marks Refugee Day, the situation at Nyarugusu camp in the western part of Tanzania has improved, camp officials have told me.

The camp hosts more than 130,000 refugees, three times its capacity, with most from neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. 

Almost every family now has a place to live and other basic needs like food and water are available, camp commandant Sospeter Boyo told the BBC. 

But mother of six Chichahepi Rajii painted a different picture.

“The most happy days here at the camp are the first two weeks after food distribution. At that time I’m usually happy because my children would have food to eat. But immediately after the food is finished none of us is happy,” she says. 

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Most people at the camp, particularly women, say food is their biggest concern.

Nyarugusu became the third largest refugee camps in the world after Burundians fled political violence. 

Violence erupted in Burundi after President Pierre Nkurunzinza announced last year that he was running for a controversial third term. He went on to win the election, rejecting calls from the opposition and foreign governments to step down.    

BBCCopyright: BBC

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Lawyers for former Democratic Republic of Congo Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba say they will appeal against his conviction for war crimes, and will press for a mistrial. 

Bemba is due to be sentenced by the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it convicted him in March of war crimes, including murder and rape. 

The atrocities were committed by his fighters in the Central African Republic after he sent them to the country to help the government put down a coup. 

Bemba's  lawyer Peter Haynes wrote to the ICC that he had been convicted on the basis of "speculation", and some of the witnesses in the case were "imposters", Reuters news agency reports. 

Read more: Bemba profile

A protest has been held outside the headquarters of South Africa's public broadcaster (SABC) over it decision to ban the broadcast of "destruction of property" during violent protests.

Members of the free speech advocacy group Right2know said SABC had gone from being a public broadcaster to a public relations machine for the governing African National Congress.

SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago accepted a memorandum from the protesters and said management would respond after studying their demands. 

The SABC imposed the ban last month, saying it did not want to incite violence. 

Its decision came after more than 20 schools were set on fire in the village of Vuwani in Limpopo province by protesters opposed to new local government boundaries. 

Right2know has been tweeting about its campaign to force SABC to reverse its ban:  

Milton Nkosi: Is South Africa’s public broadcaster using apartheid tactics?

The chief rabbi of Israel's Ethiopian community has been sacked from his position after protesting alleged racial discrimination against Jews of Ethiopian descent within the country's highest religious authority, reports The Times of Israel newspaper. 

Rabbi Yosef Hadane's contract will not be renewed at the end July, it adds.

Times of IsraelCopyright: Times of Israel

Senior officials in the Religious Affairs Ministry said the decision came in response to criticism he had expressed against the rabbinate over the marriage registration difficulties of Ethiopian couples in the central city of Petah Tikva, the Times of Israel quotes Army Radio as saying. 

Campaign group Tzohar it was “deeply disturbed” by the decision to not extend Rabbi Hadane’s contract.

APCopyright: AP

The Spanish Anti-Doping Agency has confirmed that Athletics coach Jama Aden was arrested earlier today at a hotel in Spain in a joint operation with the sport's world governing body, the IAAF, and Catalan police.

There have been no further details released.

Aden, who is from Somalia, coaches, among others, Ethiopia's 1500 metres world record holder and world champion Genzebe Dibaba and Djobouti's Ayanleh Souilieman - the former World Indoor champion for that same distance.  

He is the former coach of men's Olympic 1500 metres gold medallist Taoufik Makhloufi from Algeria.

None of the athletes have commented on Aden's arrest.

Mr Aden had been staying in Sabadell, Catalunia, close to his training camp.

The Olympics start in August in Rio de Janeiro. 

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Interbank trading shows that Nigeria's currency, the naira, now has an official value of around 250 to the dollar, compared with 350 on the black market.

The central bank is hoping the the naira will stabilise around this figure.

It took the decision to float the currency to deal with a chronic shortage of foreign currency, which was eroding Nigeria's foreign reserve.

The current rate is far below the 197 peg the central bank had been maintaining for the past 16 months, before abandoning it last week to overcome the foreign exchange scarcity.

The new policy has led to fears of rising inflation, and more difficulties accessing foreign exchange for health, education and manufacturing.

A Nigerian student in the US told me that he is considering cutting short his studies and returning home because his sponsor cannot cope with a weaker naira.

Conversation among Nigerians on the streets and social media suggest they are bracing themselves for higher inflation, a weaker naira and paying through the nose for imported goods.

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Senegal's Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura makes history today, as she begins her role as secretary general of football's world governing body Fifa.

Appointed in May, she is the first woman, as well as the first African to hold the post.

She succeeds former secretary general Jerome Valcke, who was banned from football-related activity for 12 years.

Samoura, 54, spent 21 years working for the United Nations.

Read more: CAF not expecting any favours from Samoura

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The US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a group of black South Africans who wanted to sue IBM Corp and Ford Motor Co for allegedly doing business that helped perpetuate apartheid.

The justices left in place a 2015 ruling by a lower court which said that the plaintiffs, led by  Lungisile Ntsebeza, failed to show there was a close link between decisions taken by the two firms in the US and torture, killings and other human rights abuses in South Africa from the 1970s to the early 1990s, Reuters news agency reports.

Ford was accused of providing military vehicles for South African security forces and sharing information about anti-apartheid and union activists. 

IBM was accused of providing technology and training to perpetuate apartheid, which ended in 1994 with the election of South Africa's first black-led government.

Find out: What was apartheid

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

EgyptAir says it will pay compensation of $25,000 (£17,000) to families of the 66 people killed when one of its planes crashed into the Mediterranean last month, AFP news agency reports.

The payments are separate to those expected from insurance companies on behalf of various parties depending on the investigation into the disaster, it adds. 

EgyptAir flight MS804: What we know

Kenya's security forces are in "hot pursuit" of the al-Shabab gunmen who killed five police officers in an ambush in the north-east earlier today, a police statement has said. 

The militant Islamists killed the officers and torched their vehicle, as they were escorting a commuter bus from Mandera town to Wajir town, it added. 

See earlier posts for more details

The Democratic Republic of Congo has declared a localised yellow fever epidemic in three provinces, including the capital, Kinshasa.

Health Minister Felix Kabange said 67 cases of the disease had been confirmed, and five people had died. 

The vast majority of the cases came from neighbouring Angola, although several had no link to the outbreak there. 

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said it was concerned about a shortage in yellow fever vaccines, which have been depleted largely because of the epidemic in Angola.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has tweeted photos of himself and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in the president's office on his first day back at work.

Mr Buhari took 10 days off in order to rest and receive medical treatment in London.

Upon his arrival at Abuja airport last night he said he was feeling "strong" and offered to prove the point by wrestling anyone willing to take him on.

Tottenham Hotspur have agreed a fee of £11m for Southampton midfielder Victor Wanyama, BBC Radio Solent understands.

It is thought the 24-year-old Kenyan, who joined Saints for £12.5m from Celtic in July 2013, is undergoing a medical with the White Hart Lane club.

The move would reunite Wanyama with his former Saints boss Mauricio Pochettino.

RexCopyright: Rex

Read the full BBC Sport story

Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group has said it carried out the attack on a police vehicle in north-eastern Kenya, killing five officers and wounding four others, Reuters news agency reports. 

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Two of the policemen killed in an ambush in  north-eastern Kenya were burned beyond recognition, Mandera County Police Commander Job Boronjo has said, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Four officers survived the attack, he added.

The attackers fled to Kenya's border with Somalia, Mr Boronjo said. 

Mandera County Governor Ali Roba said suspected militant Islamists had carried out the attack on a police vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade (see earlier post).     

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Tanzania had the world's third biggest influx of refugees last year, after Turkey and Russia, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has said. 

Nearly 123,400 Burundians fled to Tanzania in 2015, it said.

Turkey took in the most refugees last year, including 946,800 from Syria, followed  by Russia, 149,600 from Ukraine, the UNHCR added in a statement. 

The BBC's Patience Atuhaire has also been tweeting video from this morning's hearing at the High Court in the capital Kampala: