KADUNA (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped six schoolgirls and two staff members from a boarding school in northern Nigeria on Thursday, police said.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan security personnel on Thursday detained six supporters of pop star and presidential hopeful Bobi Wine for wearing red berets, a banned symbol of his "People Power" pressure group, a spokesman for the movement said.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - The Nigerian army released 25 children on Thursday after clearing them of suspected ties with armed Islamist groups in the country's restive northeast region, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa and Nigeria signed 30 trade and cooperation agreements on Thursday, weeks after a wave of violence against Nigerian nationals in Johannesburg and Pretoria had strained relations between Africa's top two economies.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan security forces are hunting for five Eritreans who disappeared from a hotel in Uganda where their team was playing in a soccer tournament, a Ugandan official said on Thursday.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Nearly 600 refugees left Tanzania to return to their homes in neighbouring Burundi on Thursday, the United Nations said - the first batch in a mass repatriation that some migrants fear could force them back against their will.

NEW YORK/KAMPALA (Reuters) - Somali refugee Ramlo Ali Noor will never be reunited with her 16-year-old son in her new home in Columbus, Ohio.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The United States announced on Wednesday it had re-opened its embassy in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, nearly three decades after it was shut down, underscoring deepening ties between the two nations amid persisting threats from Islamist group al Shabaab.

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Hundreds of wives and children of Malian soldiers demonstrated on Wednesday in the capital Bamako, demanding information from the government after at least 25 soldiers were killed and 60 went missing in attacks by suspected jihadists.

LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday that it had been informed by the U.S. Department of Justice that it had closed its inquiry into Shell over the 2011 $1.3 billion acquisition of a Nigerian offshore oilfield.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - A landslide at a shuttered gold mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 16 people on Wednesday, the provincial governor said.