ALGIERS (Reuters) - Cramped with his young wife and three infants in a shack in Algiers' Citi Hofra slum, Amin Kerchach could be forgiven for being angry at missing out on Algeria's gas wealth.

BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - Burundi accused the United Nations on Wednesday of spreading rumours about planned constitutional changes that critics say could upset the country's delicate ethnic power balance and possibly lead to civil war.

CONAKRY (Reuters) - At least six people, including women and children, were killed when a small gold mine in Guinea, West Africa caved in on them, a local official said on Wednesday.

MAIDUGURI/ABUJA, April 16 (Reuters) - Islamist rebels duped dozens of Nigerian schoolgirls into thinking they were soldiers come to evacuate them before abducting over 100 in their latest anti-government raid, one of the survivors said on Wednesday.

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court sentenced 119 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood of former president Mohamed Mursi to three years each in prison on Wednesday in connection with protests last October against his overthrow, judicial sources said.

PARIS (Reuters) - Former Egyptian finance minister Youssef Boutros Ghali was released following his arrest in Paris on an international warrant over corruption charges from his time in Hosni Mubarak's government, a judicial source said on Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Humanitarian aid groups are in a "race against the rain to prevent famine" in impoverished South Sudan where violence has displaced more than one million people in the past four months, European Union aid chief Kristalina Georgieva said.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying dozens of people in western Ethiopia near the Sudanese border, killing nine and wounding six others, state-run media said on Wednesday.

ABUJA/MAIDUGURI Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist insurgents abducted more than 100 female students in a night raid on a government secondary school in Nigeria's northeast Borno state, a teacher said on Tuesday.

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Tuesday to send civilian advisers to train and advise Mali's poilce while extending by two years a mission to train the army.

BANGUI (Reuters) - Thousands fled a gun battle between Chadian troops escorting a convoy of Muslim civilians and local militia in Central African Republic, Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Tuesday, as Chad completed a withdrawal of soldiers from its violence-ravaged neighbour.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - United Nations experts have called for the world body to stop allowing arms for its Mali peacekeepers to be shipped through Ivory Coast after they said a load of military hardware sent by China violated the country's arms embargo.

TRIPOLI/AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan's ambassador to Libya was kidnapped on Tuesday by gunmen who demanded an Islamist militant be released from a Jordanian jail in exchange for the diplomat's freedom.

GOMA Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - The director of Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga Park - Africa's oldest national park - survived an attack by unidentified gunmen while driving through the country's volatile eastern borderlands on Tuesday, a colleague said.