NAIROBI, Kenya - A Kenyan judge ordered the release of a man accused of leading an outlawed gang notorious for beheading its victims but police re-arrested him within moments of his release Tuesday.

NAIROBI, Kenya - The Seychelles Coast Guard said Tuesday it had arrested nine suspected pirates believed to be behind the weekend attempt to hijack a luxury cruise liner carrying an estimated 1,000 tourists in the Indian Ocean.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Gunmen released two European aid workers on Tuesday after holding them for nearly 10 days in southwestern Somalia.

GOMA, Congo - Authorities in eastern Congo have saved a baby gorilla from an animal trafficker who took it inside a plane hidden in a bag.

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar - The head of security at Madagascar's constitutional court and three others have been arrested and are accused of spreading unrest in the capital, according to a member of a national investigative commission.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Once a profitable business, Abu Abdallah's tunnel under the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip has been out of work for three weeks due to an Egyptian security crackdown on smuggling.

LAGOS (AFP) - Gunmen have kidnapped a Nigerian woman and her three children from a riverine town in the south of the country, police said Tuesday.

HARARE (AFP) - The sale of Zimbabwe's state-owned mobile phone operator NetOne -- a first key test for the new government's massive privatisation plan -- is generating huge interest, the company's CEO told AFP.

LAGOS (AFP) - 2009 is going to be a difficult year for the Anglo-Dutch firm Shell in Nigeria, where not so long ago the oil giant was pumping one million barrels per day, the group's top official has warned.

LAGOS (AFP) - A coalition of 75 rights groups in northern Nigeria Monday staged a candlelit vigil in Kaduna over the kidnap ten days ago of a Canadian woman, the organisers and local residents said.

UNITED NATIONS - The war in Darfur is now a "a low-intensity conflict" with 150 deaths a month, down from the intense fighting that killed tens of thousands when it began, the peacekeeping chief in the Sudanese region said Monday.

LAGOS (AFP) - A military court Monday sentenced 27 Nigerian soldiers, including three women, who had served as UN peacekeeepers in Liberia, to life imprisonment for mutiny after they protested over pay, their lawyer said Monday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Violence in Sudan's Darfur region has subsided into a "low-intensity conflict," an international envoy said on Monday, but the United States and its allies disagreed, according to diplomats.