African Briefs … Angolan police move against foreign diamond smugglers

LUANDA – Four people were killed and seven injured in north-eastern Angola on the margins of a police operation targeting foreign nationals suspected of diamond smuggling, media said on Friday.

The violence erupted as police rounded up “illegal aliens” and seized around 3 000 diamonds, 150 vehicles and over US$80 000 in cash.

Three Angolans were hacked to death with machetes by foreigners they had accused of smuggling, and an Angolan was shot dead, the local TPA television said.

The incidents took place on Thursday evening and on Friday in the Lunda Norte province bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo.

CAIRO – Melania Trump says she has, at times, told the president to put his phone down. And she says she does not always agree with what he tweets.

The US first lady spoke briefly with reporters on Saturday as she was wrapping up a four-country tour of Africa with a visit to the pyramids and the great sphinx in Egypt.

Standing in front of the sphinx, she said she makes her opinions clear with her husband.

“I don’;t always agree what he tweets,” she said in a rare, unscripted interaction with reporters. “And I tell him that. I give him my honest opinion and honest advice. And sometimes he listens, and sometimes he doesn’;t. But I have my own voice and my opinions, and it’;s very important for me that I express what I feel.”

PARIS – The affair reads like something out of a John le Carre novel: two former French secret service agents accused of plotting to assassinate a senior opposition figure from a former African colony.

But general Ferdinand Mbaou, the target of the alleged plot over which the Frenchmen were arrested last month, says he is “not surprised”.

Like several France-based opponents of the Republic of Congo’;s president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Mbaou believes he has been targeted for criticising one of Africa’;s longest-serving leaders from what he believed to be a safe distance.

– Nampa-AFP-AP