Zambia has turned to China for financial help because of its attractive interest rates, President Rupia Banda said on Thursday. "We need financing at concessionary rates where possible to build the necessary infrastructure," Banda told IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn during his visit. "This is among the reasons we have looked to China for support," he added.

An appeal court in Ndjamena on Thursday cleared 17 suspects in a Chadian embezzlement scandal related to the purchase of school textbooks at inflated prices, a defence lawyer said. Among those cleared was Haroun Kabadi, a former secretary general in the Chadian president's office. Several senior public figures still remain behind bars in the case.

A leader of the ethnic Fulani community in the Nigerian state the scene of weekend massacres accused the Nigerian government Thursday of injustice in the arrest of innocent herdsmen. "We call on the federal government to halt the indiscriminate arrest of herdsmen in Plateau State, especially in Mangu and Jos East local government areas from where almost all the cattle rearers were arrested," Sale Bayari told reporters.

Nine Russians from a neo-Nazi group that called itself "Simbirsk White Power" were jailed on Thursday for up to 22 years in connection with the murder of an African, investigators said. A court in the central Russian city of Ulyanovsk convicted three of the group's members of killing the Cameroonian man, named by Russian investigators as Etizok Ndobe Ernest, in August 2008.

Three Cameroonian journalists have been charged with fraud and using forged documents and detained in Yaounde's central prison, a judicial source said Thursday. Serges Sabouang, Robert Mintsa and Bibi Ngota, respectively the managing editors of La Nation, Le Devoir and Cameroun Express, were charged Wednesday and sent to the Kodengui prison, said a source close to the case, who asked not to be named.

The African Union's commissioner for peace and security on Thursday commended Guinea on "very positive" progress towards constitutional order and elections following a military coup. "Things are going very positively," Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra told AFP after a meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

The UN independent expert on freedom of religion urged governments around the world on Thursday to be on the look-out for "early warning signs" of inter-religious unrest. "The current and recurring cases of inter-communal violence in Nigeria. . . show once again the importance of taking heed of early warning signs and addressing the root causes of religious tensions," special rapporteur Asma Jahangir told the UN Human Rights Council.

The World Food Programme said Thursday it was open to an independent probe into its food aid to Somalia, a day after a UN report said up to half of the food aid to the war-wracked country is diverted. Systematic collusion between transporters of WFP food aid, implementing partners in Somalia and armed groups was behind the food diversion, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia said in a report seen by AFP Wednesday.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak's health is "satisfactory" after surgery in Germany to remove a gall bladder, the head of the medical team at Heidelberg University Hospital said on Thursday. "President Hosni Mubarak's overall medical condition continues to improve in a satisfactory manner," Professor Markus Buechler said in a statement released by Egyptian authorities.

The African Union wants Niger's military junta to free President Mamadou Tandja, overthrown in a February 18 coup, the body's peace and security chief Ramtane Lamamra said Thursday. "It's a constant source of preoccupation for the AU. . . it's both a moral and a political obligation," Lamamra said after an AU Peace and Security Council meeting.