Radio Shabelle reporter Mohammed Bashir Sheik Abdirahman and his driver Osman Qoryoley were arrested at Mogadishu international airport when they arrived for a news conference which Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi was supposed to give there. Muhiadin Omar Jimale, another radio journalist, was also stopped and would probably have been arrested, but he managed to escape.

Uganda's prime minister has approved a plan for thousands of hectares of a rain-forest to be replaced by a sugarcane plantation, a state-owned news agency told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday. Government officials said they were not aware of Apolo Nsibambi's decision to give part of Mabira Forest to a local sugar company.

Al-Jazeera reports that a Djibouti criminal court has convicted a human rights activist of defamation, sentencing him to six months in prison and fining him 480 euros. Jean-Paul Noel Abdi, chairman of the Djibouti League of Human Rights, was found guilty on Sunday of falsely accusing a presidential guard soldier of rape, according to an unnamed judicial source.

Al-Jazeera reports that an Algerian court has sentenced several former banking executives to jail after finding them guilty of corruption following the collapse of the country's largest private bank.

Fighters loyal to Congolese ex-rebel leader and former presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba will defy a government order to disarm until his security is assured, a top advisor said Wednesday.