Coal-rich Australia unveiled a much-delayed 2050 net zero emissions target yesterday, in a plan that pointedly dodged thorny details or near-term goals ahead of a landmark UN climate summit.

Roads were blocked, shops were shut, phones were down and mosque loudspeakers blared calls for a general strike in Sudan on Tuesday, a day after the army seized power in a coup.

Soldiers arrested most of the members of Sudan’s cabinet yesterday and the military chief dissolved the transitional government, while opponents of the takeover took to the streets where gunfire and injuries were reported.

Australia yesterday unveiled plans to make social media companies obtain parental consent for users under the age of 16, with multimillion dollar fines for failing to comply.

Sudan’s military seized power Monday, dissolving the transitional government hours after troops arrested the prime minister. Thousands of people flooded into the streets to protest the coup that threatens the country’s shaky progress toward democracy.

Soldiers arrested most of the members of Sudan's cabinet and a large number of pro-government party leaders on Monday in an apparent military coup, three political sources said, throwing a fragile transition towards democracy into disarray.

Ethiopia’s military launched an air strike on a rebel-held facility in Tigray’s west yesterday, a government official said, the seventh aerial bombardment in the war-hit region in a week.

At least 30 people died and over 100 were injured in intensified fighting between the Somali National Army and its former ally Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama'a (ASWJ) in the Somali state of Galmudug over the weekend, residents and hospital officials said.

Mali’s government has denied that it plans to negotiate with jihadists, walking back an earlier statement from its religion ministry saying that it would do so.

Ethiopia yesterday launched fresh air strikes on the capital of its war-hit Tigray region, the fourth day this week the city has been targeted, a government spokeswoman told AFP.

Millions in Melbourne are readying to come out of the world's longest Covid-19 lockdown later on Thursday even as cases hover near record levels, with pubs, restaurants and cafes rushing to restock supplies before opening their doors.

Two people have survived days without water in Australia’s hot and dusty outback, police said yesterday, ending a frenzied five-day rescue effort.

Hundreds of pro-military Sudanese protesters rallied for a second day yesterday, aggravating what Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok called the “worst and most dangerous crisis” of the country’s precarious transition.

Kenyan villagers yesterday lynched a man believed to be a “bloodthirsty vampire” child murderer, days after the self-confessed serial killer escaped from police custody, officials said.

Sydney will end its Covid-19 quarantine for fully vaccinated international travellers from November 1, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said on Friday, foreshadowing the full return of overseas travel after more than 19 months.

The UN’s top court handed Somalia control of most of a potentially oil and gas-rich chunk of the Indian Ocean on Tuesday after a bitter legal battle with Kenya, which strongly rejected the ruling.

Fighting has resumed in northern Ethiopia’s Afar region after a month-long lull, humanitarian and rebel sources told AFP yesterday, as the government appeared to be pressing a new offensive.

Six women and nine children kidnapped by jihadists from Christian communities in Nigeria’s northeast have escaped their captors, walking for six days through the bush to freedom, an official said Monday.

The UN refugee agency said it had recovered the bodies of 15 migrants and 177 survivors from two coastguard boats returning to Libya people who had sought to cross the Mediterranean.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday demanded France’s “total respect”, following a row over visas and critical comments from Paris about the North African country.