Nairobi/Bamako - Extremist group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed responsibility for kidnapping four European tourists at the end of January in Mali, a group which monitors extremist websites said.

US-based SITE Intelligence carried pictures of the four - one German, two Swiss and a Briton - on its website, saying the pictures came from AQIM.

The three pictures show the four haggard tourists squatting in the desert with masked gunmen lined up behind them.

AQIM said it was also holding two Canadian diplomats taken several months earlier.

Nairobi/Malabo - Security forces in Equatorial Guinea have arrested 15 people in connection with an attack on the presidential palace, reports said Thursday.

Various media quoted the West African nation's state radio as saying that several other attackers had been killed or wounded.

A three-hour firefight broke out in the early hours of Tuesday morning when gunmen who arrived in the capital Malabo by boat launched their attack.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema was not in the residence at the time. Obiang has ruled since seizing control in bloody coup in 1979.

Nairobi - The United Nations Tuesday warned that the global food crisis could be intensified dramatically by climate change as environment ministers from across the world gathered in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

A report presented to over 100 environment minsters at a meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that by 2050 there could be 25 per cent less food produced worldwide.

Food prices could rise by as much as 50 per cent within a few decades, causing even more misery for the poor, who can spend up to
90 per cent of their income on food, the report said.

Nairobi/Doha - The Sudanese government and the Darfur rebel group Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are ready to sign an agreement Tuesday on a swap of prisoners, the Sudan Tribune reported.

The agreement between Sudan and the most active of the militia groups in western Sudan would be signed in Doha, Qatar, and would form the foundations for broader peace talks bringing in other militias, the paper said.

"This agreement is a first step which could lay the foundation for a genuine peace process," JEM spokesman Ahmed Katar said.

Nairobi - The head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other environmental experts Monday called for an urgent transition to a green economy as the best way to pull the world out of global recession in a sustainable manner.

Speaking as an international conference of over 100 environment ministers got underway in Nairobi, Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary General, said that stimulus packages designed to kick start ailing economies should dedicate serious investment to green technologies.

Nairobi  - A United Nations expert on extrajudicial and summary executions on Monday begins a ten-day mission to investigate the killings that followed disputed December 2007 elections in Kenya, the UN said.

Philip Alston, who was invited by the Kenyan government, is to visit some of the hotspots of violence, including the capital Nairobi and Eldoret, where dozens died when a church was burned to the ground.