The upsurge in Sub-Saharan African mobile telecommunications seems to be subsiding as companies continue to saturate the market in a bid to gain more clients.

The levels of investment in the sector and how businesses aim to win over customers’ favour was the subject of a new report.

Oil has been found off the coasts of Liberia and Sierra Leone, energy companies have announced.

African Petroleum and Anadarko say further tests are needed to see how commercially viable the finds are. Nevertheless, hopes have been raised that an oil bonanza could spur growth in the West African states - still recovering from civil wars.

Anti-American demonstrations are under way in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Jalalabad over the burning of copies of the Koran at a US airbase.

At least three people have been injured in Kabul, while shots were fired outside a US military base.

An explosion at a steel plant in northeastern China has killed at least 10 people and injured another 17, a company official has said, in the latest industrial accident to hit the world’s second largest economy.

The blast happened late on Monday in a steel casting workshop owned by state-run Angang Heavy Machinery in the city of Anshan in Liaoning province, a spokesman for parent company Ansteel Group said.

People in Yemen are voting to elect a new president to replace veteran leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Voters are expected to rubber-stamp Vice-President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi - the only candidate in Tuesday's poll.

At least 44 people have died in a prison fight in northern Mexico.

Security officials said members of rival drug cartels confronted each other with stones and home-made weapons in the jail north of the city of Monterrey. Some victims were strangled.

Iran has halted oil sales to British and French companies, the nation's oil ministry has said.

A spokesman was reported as saying on the ministry's website that Iran would "sell our oil to new customers".

European Union member states had earlier agreed to stop importing Iranian crude from 1 July.

Libyans are marking the anniversary of the uprising that led to the overthrow of Col Muammar Gaddafi after his rule of more than 40 years.

Celebrations are planned in towns and cities across the country and have been under way for days in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the revolt began.

Think of Algeria and a snow storm does not usually come to mind. But the people of the Mediterranean country are having to get used to unprecedented amounts of the white stuff that have caused widespread chaos.

Honduras has begun the grim task of identifying the victims of Tuesday's prison fire, that is now known to have killed 355 people.

Lorries took the bodies from the jail in Comayagua to the mortuary in Tegucigalpa, 100km (60 miles) away.