A group fighting for a greater share of Nigeria's oil wealth in the country's delta region has claimed responsibility for killing four police officers this week. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an email it sent to reporters on Friday that it shot the four police officers who were on a boat patrolling the Nembe river in Bayelsa state.

An al-Qaeda splinter group has said it carried out a suicide attack on a paramilitary police base in southern Algeria which left 24 people wounded. 'We inform you that we are behind the explosion that occurred this morning at Tamanrasset,' the group told the AFP news agency on Saturday. The statement, sent just hours after the attack, was signed by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA).

More than 200 people have been killed in a series of explosions triggered by fire at a munitions depot in the Republic of Congo's capital Brazzaville, according to a senior official in the presidency, citing hospital sources. Charles Zacharie Boawo, the defence minister, appeared on national television to urge calm in Brazzaville. 'The explosions that you have heard don't mean there is a war or a coup d'etat,' he said.

Can institutional philanthropy - foundations established by the very wealthy and capitalized by investments in the stock market, hedge funds, and offshore investments - support a movement that challenges the very capitalist economic system that sustains it?