Matthew Mpoke Bigg News

At least 22 students drowned on Wednesday when a boat carrying more than 40 people sank while crossing the Nile in northern Sudan, state news agency SUNA said.Civil defense forces were searching the waters for the missing passengers but had not recovered the bodies, the agency added. A female hospital employee also drowned.(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, writing by Amina Ismail, Editing by Sami Aboudi and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

The Mediterranean rescue ship Aquarius arrived at Valletta harbour in Malta on Wednesday to disembark 141 migrants, ending a five-day tug-of-war between European Union countries which had seen the vessel banned from docking in several ports.The ship, run by the Franco-German charity SOS Mediterranee and Doctors without Borders (MSF), was allowed in after France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain agreed on Tuesday to take in the migrants.(Reporting by Chris Scicluna Editing by Sarah White and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

An iceberg the size of a hill has drifted close to a tiny village on the western coast of Greenland, causing fear that it could swamp the settlement with a tsunami if it calves.The iceberg towers over houses on a promontory in the village of Innaarsuit but it is grounded and has not moved overnight, state broadcaster KNR reported.A danger zone close to the coast has been evacuated and people have been moved further up a steep slope where the settlement lies, a Greenland police spokesman told Reuters.“We can feel the concern among the residents.

Nigerian migrants who survived a deadly sea crossing last year filed a lawsuit against Italy for violating their rights by supporting Libya’s efforts to return them to North Africa, their lawyers said on Tuesday.Seventeen plaintiffs petitioned the European Court of Human Rights last week, Violeta Moreno-Lax, a legal advisor for the Global Legal Action Network, told reporters. She was among four lawyers and several humanitarian groups involved in the case.The migrants say Italy violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights…

COSCO Shipping Holdings Co Ltd said it expects further growth in container shipping demand thanks to a continued recovery in global trade, after reporting it had swung to a net profit of $429.42 million for 2017. COSCO's optimism, which comes after Hong Kong peer Orient Overseas International Ltd (OOII) reported a profitable year, indicates that a recovery in the global container shipping industry could be here to stay. Shipping saw signs of improvement in 2017 after enduring its longest ever slump wrought by overcapacity and slow economic growth…

Djibouti's container port will remain in state hands as the government seeks investment, a senior official said on Wednesday in comments likely to reassure Washington where lawmakers say they fear it could be ceded to China. The Doraleh Container Terminal is a key asset for Djibouti, a tiny state on the Red Sea whose location is of strategic value to countries such as the United States, China, Japan and former colonial power France, all of whom have military bases there. Djibouti last month terminated the concession of Dubai's state-owned DP World to run the port…

The migrants bolted across a street and clambered over a fence into the Greek port at Patras, scouting around for trucks to stow away in. Dozens at a time scaled a 2-km stretch of fence one afternoon last week, playing cat-and-mouse with police officers who pushed them back only for the men to try again hours later. They are part of a growing number of migrants in Greece trying daily to smuggle themselves onto ferries at Patras to get to Italy. It's a dangerous passage but it has become more appealing since the closure in 2016 of the overland Balkan route to northern Europe.

A U.S. Navy destroyer this week sailed near the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed lagoon claimed by China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said on Saturday, and Beijing vowed to take “necessary measures” to protect what it said was its sovereignty. China’s foreign ministry said USS Hopper missile destroyer came within 12 nautical miles off Huangyan island, better known as the Scarborough Shoal and subject to a rival claim by the Philippines, a historic ally of the United States. It was the latest U.S.

Britain’s biggest ever warship, the new 3.1 billion pound ($4.2 billion) aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, has a leak and needs repairs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Tuesday. The 65,000-tonne ship is hailed as Britain’s most advanced military vessel and was only commissioned by the queen two weeks ago but it has a problem with a shaft seal that was identified during sea trials, the MoD said. “Sea trials are precisely for finding manageable teething problems like this and rectifying them,” a Royal Navy spokesman said.

A U.S. Navy destroyer carried out a "freedom of navigation operation" on Thursday, coming within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials told Reuters. The operation came as President Donald Trump's administration seeks Chinese cooperation in dealing with North Korea's missile and nuclear programs and could complicate efforts to secure a common stance. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the USS John S. McCain traveled close to Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals.

West African countries have detained eight Chinese ships for fishing illegally and the boats' owners could be subject to millions of dollars in fines, environmental group Greenpeace and government officials said. Inspectors from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau boarded the ships off their coasts which they found to be violating regulations on catching protected fish and using nets with small holes to facilitate bigger hauls. The arrests came after a two-month regional patrol on a Greenpeace ship, the Esperanza which carried inspectors from the West African countries, in a bid to supplement national efforts, which are often hamstrung by budget and technology constraints.

Ghana has cut its 2016 economic growth forecast sharply to 4.1 percent from 5.4 percent due to lower export prices and irregular oil production, Finance Minister Seth Terkper told Reuters on Monday. Oil output was halted between March and May at the offshore Jubilee field due to a breakdown on a production ship, and the country lost millions of dollars in revenue. It has since restarted at a lower rate. "These developments have taken into consideration the release of revised GDP figures for 2015…

Ivory Coast 2015 coffee beans exports stood at 63,106 tonnes, down about 10 percent from 70,161 tonnes the previous year, port data showed on Wednesday.   About 56,079 metric tons of coffee beans were shipped in 2015 from the port of Abidjan, compared with 59,509 tonnes the previous year, while exports were at 7,027 metric tons from the port of San Pedro compared with 10,652 metric tons the previous year. (Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and David Evans)

Cocoa exports from Cameroon's main port have slowed sharply because the outlet is clogged by a buildup of imported goods bound for Central African Republic that have not been sent due to political unrest, officials said. The port is the main gateway for goods into and out of the oil, cocoa, and timber-producing Central African nation and also serves landlocked neighbours Central Africa Republic and Chad. The problem at Douala International Terminal has deprived the cocoa industry of around 400,000,000 CFA francs ($653,595) in revenue this year, said Omer Gatien Maledy, executive secretary of the Inter-professional Cocoa and Coffee Board. Cameroon is the world's sixth biggest cocoa grower and produced 209,905 tonnes of beans in the 2013/14 season.

In its heyday, Bagamayo was a gateway to the heart of Africa for colonisers, with trade goods surging in from the Indian Ocean, and timber, ivory and countless slaves exported from the east coast harbour. Then Bagamoyo, which looks out towards the island of Zanzibar, fell on lean times for more than a century. Now Tanzania plans an $11 billion project to make it the region's biggest port and an engine of Africa's boom. The Chinese-backed project would dwarf Kenya's port at Mombasa, east Africa's trade gateway some 300 km (180 miles) to the north, and include an industrial zone and rail and road links to capitalise on growth in a region hoping to exploit new oil and gas finds.

First half 2014 profit at shipping company Bollore Africa Logistics plunged to 5.89 billion CFA francs ($11.48 million) from 9.45 billion CFA francs in the same period last year, the company said on Monday. Turnover was 38.07 billion CFA, compared with 41.50 billion CFA francs the previous year, the company said in a statement on the West African bourse. "Events that generated supplementary costs disturbed our business and caused a loss of productivity," Bollore said. It said the problems included costs associated with a delay in setting up a company to regulate the value of imports as well as outlays connected to a delay in installing a new computer system. Bollore Africa Logistics, which is based in Abidjan, is an Ivory Coast subsidiary of French Bollore.

Banque Atlantique, SocGen and Afreximbank have raised 200 million euros ($272.81 million) to start a second container terminal at Abidjan port in Ivory Coast, a banking spokesman said on Thursday. The new terminal contract, awarded to a group led by France's Bollore last year, should boost capacity at one of Africa's busiest ports - a gateway for landlocked nations to the north and a transit point for beans from the world's top cocoa grower. Port traffic is booming and total tonnage surpassed 21 million metric tons in 2013. Banque Atlantique has raised 100 million euros and Societe Generale and Afreximbank gave 50 million euros each, Souleymane Diarrassouba, director general of Banque Atlantique, told Reuters. His bank is a subsidiary of Banque Populaire du Maroc.

Heavy rains last week in the coastal and southern regions of Ivory Coast's main cocoa growing zone threatened the last stage of the April-to-September mid-crop, farmers said on Monday, though conditions remained good elsewhere. The marketing season for the mid-crop in the world's top cocoa grower opened on April 1 and harvesting is expected to decline from mid-July. Farmers said the focus of growers' concern over the weather was switching to the main crop. "There is too much rain. There's water everywhere in the camps.

Kidnappers in Nigeria's Niger Delta region released three Dutch nationals held since May 4, Anka Mustapha, a spokesman for Bayelsa state's Joint Task Force, which includes the military and police, told Reuters on Saturday. The kidnapping of expatriates by armed gangs seeking ransom money has been rife in the oil-producing Delta region, although it has tailed off since a 2009 amnesty was signed with militant groups there. Foreign companies have also improved their security. "Yes they have been rescued (released) and handed over to their country's ambassador," Mustapha said. He declined to give further details. Nigeria has Africa's largest population and it has become the biggest economy on the continent, overtaking South Africa.

A Liberia-flagged oil tanker has gone missing off the coast of Ghana and a senior port official told Reuters on Saturday the captain sent a distress call to say the vessel was attacked by pirates. The Liberia-flagged MT Fair Artemis last made contact with its manager, Fairdeal Group S.A., at 6 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Wednesday when it was operating off the coast of Ghana, the company said. The ship failed to make contact the next day. Pirate attacks jumped by a third off the coast of West Africa last year, pushing up insurance costs for shipping firms operating in a key commodities export hub. "Our primary concern ... is for the safety of those on board the vessel.

An oil tanker missing for a week off the coast of West Africa was attacked by pirates who stole its cargo, the company that managed the ship said on Thursday after speaking with its captain. The Liberia-flagged MT Fair Artemis had last made contact with its manager, Fairdeal Group SA, on June 4 when it was off the coast of Ghana. "The ship was boarded by a number of pirates who have stolen the cargo and other items on the vessel," Fairdeal fleet director John Gray said in a statement, adding that all on board were safe. The statement gave no further details. Pirate attacks jumped by a third off the coast of West Africa last year, pushing up insurance costs for shipping firms operating in a key commodities export hub.