Nairobi/Abuja  - Nigeria's Islamic authority has told an 84-year-old man with 86 wives and 170 children that he must whittle his number of spouses down to four or face the death penalty, reports said Thursday.

The BBC said that Mohammed Bello Abubakar, a former teacher and preacher, could face the death penalty under Sharia law, which was reintroduced to the Muslim-majority Niger State, North-West Nigeria, in 2000.

Nigerian media and the BBC interviewed Abubakar two weeks ago, when he claimed there was no punishment in the Koran for having more than four wives.

Nairobi  - A German national resident in Kenya is being held in connection with an attempt to illegally export live animals to Japan, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said Thursday.

The KWS said the unnamed German was arrested at midnight on a reptile farm in Eastern Kenya where he works as the director.

The man was arrested after KWS officials intercepted a consigment at Moi International Airport, Mombasa, late on Wednesday.

Nairobi- Barack Obama's half-brother George Hussein Obama has been discovered living in tin shack in a Nairobi slum, the Italian version of Vanity Fair reported.

Obama shares the same father with the 26-year-old George, who lives in Huruma, a slum on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.

Senator Obama's father, the late Barack Obama Senior, was from the village of Nyang'oma-Kogelo in western Kenya.

Obama Senior fathered Barack while in the United States, but left when the young Obama was two to return to Kenya.

Nairobi, Mogadishu - Somali pirates have hijacked a Japanese tanker and an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden just two days after a Malaysian ship was seized, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said Thursday.

The BBC quoted IMB head Noel Choong as telling reporters in Kuala Lumpar that the ships were seized on Thursday morning.

There are believed to be around 20 crew onboard the Japanese ship while the number onboard the Iranian vessel is unknown.

Nairobi  - The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, said on Thursday that if parliament was convened next week it would be a violation of the rules governing ongoing power- sharing talks.

"If he (President Robert Mugabe) convenes parliament, it is a violation of the conditions of the talks," Tsvangirai told journalists during a short visit to the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

A July 21 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which set down rules for the tripartite talks, orders parties not to convene parliament or form a new government except by consensus.

"A violation of the MOU would be up to mediators to deal with," he added.

Nairobi  - The Red Cross on Wednesday asked for more money to help deal with a worsening humanitarian crisis in drought-hit Southern Ethiopia.

"Over the past two months the situation has worsened and living conditions have deteriorated," Lorenzo Violante, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) drought operations manager for Ethiopia, said in a statement.

"People have exhausted all their resources and are unable to feed themselves," he added.